I regularly try to predict the future on this first day of the year.  Sometimes I review how I did at the end of that year.   On  December 31, 2012, I predicted what would happen by the Year 2020, or eight years into the future .   The most important thing, although this was not a prediction, was that I made it into 2020.  All my life I've wanted to do this, for 2020 was 36 years away when i n 1974 I was part of a NASA effort to educate the public about Planet Earth .  I came up with the program name:  Earth 2020. So, anyway, on  January 2, 2020, I looked back  on my prognostications.  Had eight wrongs and two rights. So while  I admitted that I'm clearly not a seer , I mischievously predicted what I thought would surely occur in 2020.  I did not anticipate the pandemic, so while I was mostly right, including the UK leaving the European Union and Donald Trump losing his re-election attempt, the Dubai World Expo was shifted into 2021.  I was also right on the sun rising the mo

The whole World had 289,936 covid cases this past week, and South Korea alone was responsible for 229,668 of them, or 79%.   The USA was #2 with 21,309, or 7%. Interestingly enough, of the 576 world deaths this past week, S. Korea had only 52 of them, or 9%.   Brazil had 171 covid deaths, or 30%, while the USA had 139 deaths, or 24%. There remains a range of questions and unknowns about our past pandemic.  One of them is, where did this all start?  Well, no doubt about the location being China, and almost surely Wuhan.  But where and how exactly?  The  New York Times  this week summarized the current state of knowledge: Was China initially hiding the truth?  Yes. The country was concerned, and ordered the original coronavirus samples be destroyed.  Maybe this was smart, but was "coverup" the reason? This Wuhan lab was known to purposefully create dangerous viruses to learn how to combat them before they emerged in the wild.  But was this, then, a phase of biological warfare?

The World is nearing 700 million covid cases and 7 million deaths, a mortality rate of 1%. The highest number of daily deaths occurred on 21January2021 with 17,000. Deaths dropped to 109 two days ago. Yesterday the world had 225,694 new cases, with South Korea alone suffering from 164,461.  The USA was #2 with 16,332 new cases. The mortality rate this past week for the World was 0.4%. S. Korea 0.02% USA  0.5% Thus you can see that the mortality rate has dropped quite a bit for the World and U.S., probably because of vaccinations and other treatments. But why is S. Korea's mortality rate today 25 times lower than the USA?  Looking at the mortality data from the beginning, S. Korea's rate is "only" 10 times lower. World  1% USA  1% S. Korea  0.1% How does the covid mortality rate compare to the seasonal flu? From the  World Health Organization : Influenza remains one of the world’s greatest public health challenges. Every year across the globe, there are an estimated 1