For the past couple of days I've been keeping you up to date on our two stranded NASA astronauts on the International Space Station.    Today, NASA shared one more scary bit of news : Their assessment is that if Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were to soon return on the semi-crippled Starliner spacecraft, the odds of not making it back alive would only be 1 in 270. Sure, if a horse had those same odds, it would almost never win. However, two human lives are worth a lot more than a losing horse. Consider this: According to a 2017   Harvard University   study, the odds that your plane will crash are one in 1.2 million, and the odds of dying from a crash are one in 11 million. Your chances of dying in a car accident, meanwhile, are one in 5,000 . In other words, you would have a 40,740 times better chance on a successful commercial flight than what is facing those astronauts. Another study found that more than 95% of aircraft occupants survived the crash. Two other ways...

The latest info about COVID-19, the Delta variant and vaccinations: There appears to be a  decline of vaccine effectiveness , but not as bad as was shown in Israel.  Numbers like drop to 39% after six months might be closer to double that number. Further, those who are vaccinated, if so unfortunate as to get infected,  almost always get mild symptoms , and few die. The Delta variant is around  twice ( maybe 60% ) as infectious  as the Alpha original, but causes more severe illnesses, as the  hospitalization rate is double  that of the Alpha.  This is why hospitals are today overburdened 98% of the new cases are those who are unvaccinated . From the  New York Times  this morning: Those who are fully vaccinated have a one chance in 5000/day of being infected. In some of the safer states where more were vaccinated, this chance improves to 1 in 10,000/day.  Thus, in a 3-month period, the vaccinated here have a 1% chance of contracting C...