This was a good year.  Avoided COVID.  Am at the best  Body Mass Index  in at least the past quarter century.  I've never been, as such, fat.  Well, maybe when I was around 1 year old.  But to the present. I saw 146.8 pounds on the scale a couple days ago.  My BMI is thus 23.0, just above average in the optimal green category. My weight before the pandemic was 165, or a BMI of 25.8, in the overweight category. Through a strict vegetable and little solid carbohydrate diet, with few snacks and almost no dessert, my weight dropped to 154, a BMI of 24.1, which placed me just in the optimal category. I just returned from a  five-week trip , including a 21-day Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise, and saw 155.4 pounds, a BMI of 24.3, still barely in the optimal category.  But the amazing thing is that I thought I had gained at least 6 pounds, for I ate and drank a lot.  Too much. The solution, I determined, was a lot of sleep . True, we remain in COVID Pandemic status.  However, the bivalen

China started it all, but their totalitarian form of government squelched any potential epidemics.  Yesterday, for example, they had 1938 new cases, or 1.3 new cases/million population.  Yet, they  just closed down Shenzhen , a city of 17.5 million.  Why?  A very small uptick in cases.  Much of Shanghai is also quarantined.   However, they are teaching Hong Kong a lesson, for that territory yesterday had 32,340 cases, a rate of 4267 new cases/million.   In comparison, the USA only had 5143 new cases, or 15 new cases/million South Korea led the world with 350,176 new cases, or 6826 new cases/million. On Saturday I posted on  WHO REALLY IS VLADIMIR PUTIN?   Today I feature the polar opposite world luminary, 44-year old  Volodymyr Zelensky : Born to Jewish parents, father a professor and mother an engineer, in Ukraine. His grandfather's father and three brothers died in the Holocaust. Earned a law degree from the Kyiv National Economic University. Met Olena in college, dated for eight