We all have been in the dumps.  When things go bad, other negatives seem to pile up too.  Take President Joe Biden as a good example.  He is now given little chance to beat Donald Trump on November 5.  Then,   he yesterday found out he has contracted COVID-19 .  Also,   two-thirds of Democrats said President Biden should step aside and allow the party to select a different nominee . There seems to be a sense that Biden will soon decide not to run.  The likely candidate will then be Kamala Harris.  I have long thought that the best Democratic presidential option was Michelle Obama.   Polls also seem to point in this direction.   Michelle, however, seems disinterested in this prospect.  Now that Republicans are confident that they will sweep the White House and both houses of Congress, with Democracy truly threatened, perhaps Michelle can be convinced.  Biden's greatest contribution to the future of the USA would be to ...

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        7...

  From the Miami Herald:    Where are you most likely to catch COVID? Poorly ventilated movie theater with mostly unmasked audience:  14%. But jumps to 54% if you're unmasked and people are talking a lot. If the crowd is masked, the risk of infection drops to 5.3% with no talking and 24% with talking. DON'T GO TO A MOVIE THEATER YET! Heavy exercise in a poorly ventilated placed packed with maskless people:   99% .  Yikes. Just working out for a short amount of time in a well-ventilated gym with no one wearing masks:  17%. Poorly ventilated:  67%. From the  New York Times  this morning: More than three-quarters of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths have occurred among people 65 and older. Yet, seniors seem not be particularly concerned: The plausible explanation provided is that seniors tend to lean to the right ( Republican ), while younger generations to the left ( Democrat ). Of course you know this: Millions of Republican voters have decid...

While the Omicron variant continues to attack pockets of vulnerability throughout the world, this pandemic is losing momentum, and the peak of new deaths reached exactly a year ago--16,503 on 24January2021--is now down to 7000.  Watch Japan, for example, which is on a definite upswing after doing so well the past two years. To appreciate how important it is to get vaccinated, let's look further in  Switzerland earlier this month in deaths/100,000 : Unvaccinated  11.56 Fully vaccinated, but not boosted  0.89 ( 13 times fewer deaths ) Fully vaccinated and boosted  0.07  ( 165 times fewer deaths ) This  same report  looked into the U.S. early in December  (almost no Omicron ): Unvaccinated:  9.74 Fully vaccinated, but not boosted  0.71  ( 14 times fewer deaths ) Fully vaccinated and boosted  0.10  ( 97.4 times fewer deaths ) Keep in mind that, while contagion is much higher with Omicron, the mortality rate is much lower....