Breakfast at the Sheraton Grand Sukhamvit was possibly my best in my entire life. The first course featured ham, two eggs over easy, tofu with ginger, green tea, a salad, natto and curry over rice, plus a glass of Prosecco:
The second course added salmon and the traditional Thai noodle soup, with Prosecco and longan juice:
The second course added salmon and the traditional Thai noodle soup, with Prosecco and longan juice:
This has been the most relaxing and enjoyable trip for me ever in Thailand. Same for my traveling companion. We basically did nothing, but visit Bangkok (cultural tour of Grand Palace), Phuket (3D Museum) and Chiang Mai (tigers, butterflies, orchids and living things). Bought a set of comfortable shirts and made nine new vests. Our best cuisine was Italian, topped off by Spaghetti Bolognese in the room.
When we arrived in Thailand, this country was #2 to China in COVID-19 cases. Today, Thailand is #9, with no new cases since we came. Still no deaths.
The last time I checked, the USA had 53 confirmed cases, with 39 coming from the ship that will ruin cruising for the rest of the year, the Diamond Princess. If you follow this blog site, you know that the same person I am now traveling with and I spent part of December on that liner.
There are now 80,154 cases of Covid-19 in 37 countries plus the Diamond Princess, with 2703 deaths. 27,703 have recovered. South Korea with 893 ailing has suddenly jumped ahead of that ship. However, the majority happen to be linked to a doomsday church cult, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, a fringe sect of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. I guess the message is don't belong to doomsday religious organizations or don't go to church.
I've long felt that the total world Covid-19 cases would level off at slightly more than 100,000 cases, with no more than 3000 deaths. When you consider that almost 4,000 people die EVERY DAY from traffic accidents and nearly 2,000 from the flu EVERY DAY, I need to keep underscoring that the pandemic is the media. Interesting that the closer to Wuhan, the higher the fatality rate. In China, around 3% will die, while outside of China, this incidence seems to be slightly more than 1%. Here is one comparison:
- Mortality rate in Wuhan was 4.9%.
- Mortality rate in the Hubei Province was 3.1%.
- Mortality rate nationwide was 2.1%.
For the record:
- there are three types of influenzas: A, B and C
- only type-A has triggered a pandemic
- there are 144 different subtypes of influenza A: from H1N1 to H9N16
- the coronavirus also caused SARS and MERS
- until 1960 coronavirus only caused colds
- but something happened, and the coronavirus affecting animals suddenly got transferred to humans
- coronavirus strains don't get H?N? labels
- the H5N1 avian flu has a fatality rate of 60%, but only 375 have died of this ailment since 2003
- the "common" flu kills less that 0.1%, or, in other words, if you catch the flu, you have a 99.9% of surviving...unless you are a senior citizen, for 90% of seasonal flu deaths are older people
- SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002-2003, a coronavirus, had a fatality rate of 9.6%, with few deaths of older people
- that dreaded 1918 Spanish Flu, the H1N1 virus (transferred from birds or pigs or both), infected from 3% to 4% of the world population, with a mortality (same as fatality) rate between 10% and 20%
- when the H1N1 virus (swine flu) returned in 2009, one in five of the world population got sick, but it was difficult to determine exactly how many succumbed, with 151,700 to 575,400 being the estimate-- the mortality rate most used was only around 0.02%--which means the fatality rate was LESS than the seasonal flu
- if you catch the flu once every decade, that is about average
Now you know more about the coronavirus and flu than almost anyone you know. We return to Honolulu tomorrow.
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