The top stories of the day start with our pandemic: The world is set to reach a quarter billion COVID-19 cases tomorrow.  This means that slightly more than 3% got infected with this virus. Today, the world experienced five million COVID-19 deaths.   This represents 1 death for every 1500 people. Traffic deaths, in the same 20 month period, showed 1 death for 3350 people. Or, during this pandemic, you are about twice as likely to have died from COVID-19 than in a traffic accident. This means the mortality rate is 2%. The U.S. mortality rate is 1.6%. Experts remain uncertain, but the best available info today indicates that  40-50% of those infected don't show any symptoms .  Amazingly enough, there were  28 studies  on this subject by early this year, and the asymptomatic rate ranged from 1.4% to 78.3%. Say the asymptomatic rate is 50%, then the world mortality rate is 1%. The mortality rate of the seasonal flu is 0.1%. But the asymptomatic rate of the seasonal flu is probably al