DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

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
            6     1311     6832       1322       919        414
            7     1203     6452       1226       899        306

            8     1250     6448       1058       940        305

            9       976     5612         841       875        301

Summary:  

• Well, all numbers here are down.  Better than up.
• India is now #1 in new cases with 65,156, #2 USA 54,199 and #3 Brazil 46,305.
• This means that in two weeks, multiply by 2% and these countries should continue to show new deaths/day near 1000.
• You say, wait a minute, shouldn't the mortality rate be around 0.5%?  Yes, but the total cases column does not account for too many asymptomatic cases, which could be from 35% to 80% of all infections.  After four months of this pandemic, our top experts are still perplexed about this percentage.  It keeps changing and getting higher, while this mortality rate as a result drops.
• As the asymptomatic rate for the seasonal flu is around 50%, you would think that the COVID-19 asymptomatic rate should be similar.
• Looking at those Worldometer numbers:
• The World rate of mortality calculates to be 3.6%.
• If death lags by around two weeks later, this would mean that there will be 9451 new deaths on August 23.
• But if the 50% asymptomatic number is used, the deaths are reduced by a factor of 2, which means that on August 23, the new deaths for that day should be 4726, which is slightly lower than the 5612 of today.  Return in two weeks to see which number is closer to reality.  If lower than 4726 deaths, the asymptomatic rate is higher than 50%.

Yesterday, I indicated that Hawaii had the lowest incidence of COVID-19 in the nation, but was getting close to Thailand in total cases, even though they have a population of 70 million, and we have only 1.4 million.

Hawaii, however, has made only 9,497 tests/million, the lowest in the nation.  Perhaps this is one reason why our new infections have jumped by a factor of five from our low period.  Alaska is up to 35,470/million, #1 in the country. Want to know how much your state tests?  Click here.

Comparison of total cases and tests/million people:

                           Cases/million  Tests/million

• Hawaii            2,209              9,497
• Thailand              48             10,731
• World             2,530                  ?
• Qatar            40,120           184,067
• Bahrain        25,373           519,146
• Chile            19,392              94,752
• USA             15,483           193,853
• Singapore      9,381            251,812
• South Africa  9,315             54,228
• Sweden          8,146             85,428
• UK                 4,561           266,508
• Germany        2,585           102,451
• India               1,558             16,930
• Japan                 347               7,608
• South Korea      284             31,605
• China                  59              62,814
• Taiwan                20                3,489

• Louisiana     26,677            318,670
• Arizona        24,800            138,860
• Florida         23,160             181,100
• New York    21,470             322,320
• Mississippi  20,900             161,570
• (these states above rank from #1 to #5 in the country for highest number of cases/million)
• Maine            2,960             135,170
• Vermont        2,290               94,970
• Hawaii          2,209                 9,497
• (these states above rank #1 to #3 in the country for fewest cases/million)

Of course, the more you test, the higher will be the cases/million.  Yet:

• The UK has tested a lot more than the USA, but has a cases/million figure of less than a third.  
• Germany has about half the tests/million of the USA, but one-fifth the cases/million.  
• Taiwan does not test much and does have the lowest number of cases per capita.  But this is probably because there are so few needing tests.  One would think that the both Taiwan and Hawaii fall in this category, even though there has been a recent surge of infections in Hawaii, mostly because the populace is getting overconfident and careless.
• At one time it was thought that the hot summer temperatures would lower the incidence of COVID-19.  Well, two of the hottest countries in the world, Qatar and Bahrain, have the highest cases/million.  Of course, they do test more than almost anyone else.
• Sweden never really closed down its economy, and has thus fared poorly in Europe.  However, their cases/million figure is about half that of the USA.
• India has hardly tested, so their case number surely must be much higher than reported.
• China has a tests/million figure one-third that of the USA.  However, the USA has 262 times more deaths/million and 60 times more cases/million.
• China has just about exactly a thousand times the population of Hawaii:  1.4 billion versus 1.4 million.  Nothing to do with the coronavirus, just an interesting statistic.
• The USA has made 63.6 million  tests.  China has completed  87.9 million tests.  #3 is Russia with 29.7 million.  While India has been lagging in testing, they still made 22.1 million, #4 in the world.  Want to find your country?  Click here.

So is Donald Trump again lying by saying the USA tests more than anyone else in the world?  Of course he is lying.  But in this case, just a slight exaggeration and not the standard boldface deceit that he usually unleashes with impunity .  We are #2 to China in total tests and somewhere in the top ten in terms of tests/capita.

Rather than toss in something funny or interesting or enlightening at the end, I here insert another parody involving this nincompoop nitwit running our country, his viral re-election pitch:

You can now smile on your way to church, or move into the topic of this Sunday: God, religion and irreligion, which according to Wikipedia:

Irreligion, may include deism, agnosticism, ignosticism, anti-religion, atheism, skepticism, ietsism, spiritual but not religious, freethought, anti-theism, apatheism, non-belief, pandeism, secular humanism, non-religious theism, pantheism and panentheism.

Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup polls:

• 2005: 77% religious, with 4% atheists
• 2017:  25% were not religious, with an additional 9% being convinced atheists

According to various experts in the field, agnostics and atheists are 7-10% of the world.  Does this mean 90 to 93% are religious?  Probably not.  There is a good percentage who is just not religious.  This is borne out by the following survey.  WIN-Gallup International Association poll in 2017 of % who are either not religious or an atheist:

• China            90
• Sweden         73
• UK                69
• Australia       63
• Vietnam        63
• Germany       60
• Japan             60
• South Korea  60
• Israel             58
• Canada          57
• France           50
• USA              39
• Mexico         36
• Russia           30
• Italy              26
• Bangladesh   19
• Brazil            17
• India               5
• Nigeria           2
• Thailand         2

For the USA only:

Gallup Polling:  Here is the no percentage to the question, do you believe in God?

• 1944    1%
• 1947    3% (after World War II)
• 1967    1%
• 2011    7%
• 2017  12%

So if 39% of Americans are not religious or atheistic, then 27% must merely be non-religious.

Pew released a poll last month that related belief in God, morality and just about everything else.  I'll just show one graphic, indicating that those countries with low Gross National Products believe that you can't be morally upright without believing in God, while higher GDP nations feel that you can lead a moral life without religion:

The USA is on the higher side of that line, meaning there is a tendency for the people to feel that one can't be "good" if that individual does not believe in God.

So, do you believe in God?  In the USA, it depends on how you ask the question:

In short:

• If you ask:  Do you believe in God, around 90% answer YES.
• If you complicate the question with terms of doubt, those percentages are dropping at quite a swift rate.
• Yet, at worst, at least 64% of Americans do believe in God.

I'm thus in the minority.  However, Pew also polled the general public and scientists in the USA:

If you don't like to read graphs, the above says:

• 83% of the general public believe in God and 96% believe in "something."
• 33% of scientists believe in God and 41% don't believe in anything supernatural.
• Two years ago I posted on this subject.

Anyone not interested in this subject left a long time ago, so let me further elongate this posting with my take on the future of religion, The Golden Evolution, which is Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.  To summarize:

Yes! The Golden Evolution, in my simple solution (hold your breath, this is as crazy as making hydrogen free in Chapter 3 of Book 1), then, is the process by which there is general acceptance that Man created God when it was vital for our early ancestors to have an all-watching and morally satisfying divinity, but that an omnipresent protector is today obsolete. The only way for the Dennett revolution to happen is first for the sudden emergence of a global test of monumental proportions. Step One, to challenge our survival: a cataclysmic series of events, such as, perhaps, oil suddenly jumping to $200/barrel and tens of millions perishing through global heating one hot summer, with the prospects of Planet Earth converting to Planet Venus (where the surface temperature is 900°F, see Chapter 5 in Book 1) to arise with such fury that all elements of Mankind compellingly unite and take coordinated action, which would be Step Two. Having overcome this global crisis (let’s be at least positive about the outcome), Step Three would be that evolutionary transcendence towards a higher respect for the environment and a fading away of the supreme being concept.  (One by-product would be peace on earth forever.)

As we today don’t need a feared deity to serve as an enforcer, for earlier reported studies have shown that most of our citizens, religious or not, choose the righteous and ethical pathway in life, maybe we can shift our belief and have faith in ourselves, instead. Mind you, there really isn’t any real requirement for worshipping as such, but, in the transition, as our current society appears to have a psychological need for some higher order symbol, perhaps Planet Earth can serve as that tangible object. Instead of depending on our environment to take care of us, though, while in the midst of overcoming Peak Oil and Greenhouse Effect, the Golden Evolution will be the process by which we switch roles and take on the necessary task for remediation and sustainability as a common goal for humanity. In time, and this may take many millennia, we will then expand our vision to our Galaxy as our domain. In anticipation, Book 3 could well be called SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for the Whole Universe.

For the few who hang around to the end to see if I report on my occasional journal entry, I start with some leftovers I had for dinner:  wagyu beef and sashimi, with the same bottle of Santa Barbara Bordeaux:

I'm watching NHK's Somewhere Street, which has appeared regularly now for 15 years. Normally, they walk around streets in Portugal or Malaysia or somewhere far away from Japan.  However, this show strolled through Ginza in Tokyo.  Came back all those memories of karaoke bars and Ginza Kan Kan Musume (a song which was featured), Uniqlo (large store here), Hotel Seiyo and lunch personally served by Jiro at his famous 3-star Michelin restaurant.

To close, the second batch of Pearl's Sunbursts just this morning fully bloomed on my lanai:

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