ARE VIRUSES INCREDIBLY AMAZING OR WHAT?

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       1       676    4857        1057      438         92

             5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           14       935    5414        1341       586       174

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           21     1119    5669        1346       671        195

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
           28    1266     5589         955       776        190
           30    1485     7023       1544       779        240
           31    1465     6418       1189       783        315
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            2     1123     5601       1048       852        148
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            4       567     4366         572       810        173
            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

Summary:  Just when you thought all was getting well....bam.  It got worse everywhere.  At least the USA is now #2 in new deaths to Brazil, but only barely.  They, us and India all had more than 50,000 new cases yesterday.

Donald Trump will love this:

The book ‘Cina COVID 19. La Chimera che ha cambiato il Mondo’ (Edizioni Cantagalli, Siena, 2020, 272 pages, 20 euros) by scientist Joseph Tritto was released yesterday.

It reads like a conspiratorial thriller, involving General Chen Wei (right), who now runs the Wuhan Lab, long implicated in the origin of the that dreaded COVID-19.  But it's supposedly a typical scientific effort.

To quote:

Rome (AsiaNews) — COVID-19, which is killing and infecting people all over the world, is not a naturally occurring virus; instead, it was created in Wuhan, in a level-4 biosafety laboratory. Not only Chinese, but also French and US scientists contributed to the production of this “chimera,” an organism created in a lab.

Whoops, the USA is involved.  Maybe Trump will find a way to blame Barack Obama.  The more I search, I wonder if this is fake news, for I can't seem to find a photo of Joseph Tritto.  But you can buy his book here.  Something about the author:

Doctor in urology, andrology, infertility microsurgery, and a professor in microtechnology and nanotechnology in the United Kingdom at the University of Birmingham and a visiting professor and director of nano-medicine at Amity University in New Delhi (India).

The cast of characters is real:

• Professor Shi Zhen Li, who seemed to have disappeared.

• Professor Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, who appears to be well and real.

• Dr. Ai Fen, who was muzzled by authorities, and is now missing.

• Dr Li Wenling, an ophthalmologist who was forced to keep quiet and then died from COVID-19.

It's intriguing enough that I report about this publication here, with a caveat that something doesn't quite seem right.

I've used these Wednesdays to educate you on various scientific topics, such as viruses, fusion, SETI and such.  By the way, did you know there is an annual World Science Day?  November 10.

Today, a crystallization of some those viral postings.  A typical drawing of what a COVID-19 looks like (which reminds me of golf tees poking into a golf ball, and I leave for the Ala Wai Golf course soon after I post this article):

An ebola virus:

You wouldn't think viruses would look so complicated.  Here are two facts that make viruses amazingly incredible:

So you think viruses are really, really small?  Well, they are, for you can't even see them using a typical microscope.  They are, on average, about one-tenth the size of bacteria.

However, they are the most abundant of biological entities, more than all the stars in our Universe.  How many?  10 billion trillion trillion.  Laid end to end, they would stretch 100 million light years.

Start with the size of our Milky Way Galaxy, which has a diameter of 100,000 light years.  In other words, if you were on a space craft moving along at the speed of light and travel from one end to the other, it would take 100,000 years to get across, a time period in our history when Cro-Magnons, the first modern humans, emerged.  And you know how fast light travels.  Like a distance 7.5 times around Planet Earth in ONE second.  Our galaxy is enormous.

Read this to see what happened on Planet Earth from 100,000 years ago to today.  But viruses end to end reach out 100 million light years, a thousand times longer...so:

These are all galaxies, and you can't even see the Milky Way.  Our closest neighbor is the Andromeda Galaxy.  It is, first, larger than ours, and 2.5 million light years away.  How far away is that?  Take Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our Sun.  They are 4 light years apart.  Our two galaxies are 625,000 times even further apart.  So to conclude, our viruses placed on a straight line side by side would extend 100 million light years long, 40 times the distance of Andromeda to the Milky Way, or from one end of that upper photo of a portion of outer space to the other.

America's Got Talent has been buffeted by the coronavirus, but is bumping along.  Here is a European version that got four red buzzes, but survived, for the ending was remarkable.  Corinne Sutter is an amazing Swiss swift artist.

Last night AGT celebrated their 15th anniversary, and played back their 15 most viral performances.  Interestingly enough, only four of them went on to become champion for the year.

My favorites were:

#9  Celine Tam, who got a Golden Buzzer:

#6  Grace Vanderwaal, who, too, got a Golden Buzzer:

#5  Angelica Hale, who, of course got that golden buzzer:

#4  Courtney Hadwin, golden buzzer, and my second-most favorite:

#3  Darci Lynn, yes, Golden Buzzer:

#1, and my all-time favorite performance, Kodi Lee, who is autistic and blind, and, of course, started with a golden buzzer:

As memorable as that was, it only ties my all-time co-favorite, the first audition by Jackie Evancho:

Well, that had nothing to do with a virus, but here is a MASH tutorial about how to prevent getting infected by COVID-19.

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