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Showing posts with the label smallpox

THE COVID PANDEMIC BEGAN FOUR YEARS AGO

Looking back in time, my  posting on 28February2020  summarized my return from Thailand: The fearsome factor was that Thailand had the second-most cases of   covid-19   when I left Honolulu on February 12.  Today, it is #9.  No new cases appeared after I arrived in that country.  No one is known to have died. (Interestingly enough, today  Thailand  is #33 in total cases and #143 in cases/million population.) But on  11 March2020 the World Health Organizaton declared the coronavirus to be a global pandemic .   This was the first time that a pandemic was caused by a coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1200 points, the worst since 2008.  The eleven year bull market came to an end. China and Italy were locked down. Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he and his wife Rita Wilson had contracted this virus.  They were in Australia. Two Utah Jazz players tested positive and the NBA canceled the rest of the season. While thousands of schools would shut down by the end of week,

SHOULD YOU BE WORRIED ABOUT MONKEYPOX?

From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):            DAY    USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30       3880    14748       1224       299      465 Jan      14        4142    15512        1151         189      712 Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194 April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37 May     4        853     13667        3025      3786     59   June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95  July    7         251      8440        1595        817      411 Aug 

JOY AND GRIEF

  I'll start with a lot of grief.  Did you notice that the World has passed   200 million COVID-19 cases ?   That's 2.6% of the global population.   Note that our current pandemic shows a current total deaths of  4.3 million , significant, but only 0.06% of people on Planet earth.   Smallpox killed 500 million . The odds for you being here so far because of this novel coronavirus are  1767 to 1.    Not only don't I personally know anyone who died from this pandemic, I don't know anyone who even was infected.   And I live in a building holding 200 seniors. Only 2% of humans around the world live in elder-care facilities.  THIS GROUP WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR  MORE THAN A THIRD  OF ALL COVID-19 DEATHS. A century ago, the  H1N1 Pandemic , also known as the Spanish Flu, killed  50 million  when the world population was 1.8 billion. That's almost 3% of the world population. It is said that the average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by 12 years. However, there are estimate