PANDEMIC! HURRICANE! TSUNAMI?

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
             2       687    5155         1277      377         95
             3       616    5170         1264      444       108
             4       254    4494         1111       610         74
             5       251    3572          535       421       173
             6       378    3573          656       474       111
             7       993    5504        1312       479       192
             8       890    5507        1187       491       100
             9       960    5411        1199       479       118
           10       849    5416        1270       521       140
           11       731    4995          968       543       111
           12       380    4118          659       500       108
           13       465    3729          770       540         93
           14       935    5414        1341       586       174
           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107
           16       963    5742        1299       680       216
           17       946    5559        1100       676       135
           18       813    5011          885       543       144
           19       412    4606          715       675         85
           20       545    4040          718       596       140

           21     1119    5669        1346       671        195

Summary:

• Just when you thought things were leveling off, nope, the USA had the most new deaths since May.  There also were 67,140 new cases.  If the CDC is right and the actual number of cases should be ten times higher, that would make that more than half a million new cases  yesterday.
• Two more things occurred to me:
• Contact tracing is now impossible if you are only following up on 10% of those who actually have this disease.  The other 90% are equally potent as spreaders.
• Temperature checks are a waste of time.
• By the end of the year there might be 25 million coronavirus cases in the world.
• There are a billion flu cases annually.
• Thus, only 2.5% of people with fever might have COVID-19, and, even lower because people have fever from allergies and other reasons.  For commercial air passengers, then, you will prevent more than 97.5% of potential passengers boarding that flight.  The advantage of course, is that this will lower your chances of getting the flu.
• Plus, if there are nine times more asymptomatic cases than those who actually get sick, most of the infected will get through anyway.  And they are all transmitters.
• So why do all organizations do temperature checks?  This makes them look responsible.

Remember yesterday when I reported how pissed The ignored Donald would be at Anthony Fauci for the good doctor being asked to throw out the first ball at the New York Yankees vs Washington Nationals baseball game marking the beginning of the season tomorrow?  Result, Fauci wasn't invited to Trump's renewed press briefing.   He has another one today at 5:30PM EDT (11:30AM HST) .  While he won't by then be POTUS, even if already in jail and allowed, his reacting tweet should be priceless to this TIME selection.

A Trump versus Cuomo presidential election would have been entertaining.  Here they are with A Little Help from the Feds.

Oh, this you just got to watch.  I've been showing variations of You are the World during this pandemic.  Here is You are the Worst.  This one will make your day.

The Trump presidential campaign strategy is beginning to clarify:

• Get to the brink of war with China.  Any wartime president gets re-elected.
• China is totally responsible for COVID-19, not Trump.
• China is trying to steal our vaccine research results.  The reality is that China is ahead of the USA in developing a vaccine.
• Send federal troops to cities nationwide to show-off our military.

• Open K-12 schools so parents can go back to work to kick re-start the economy.  Keep bad mouthing the terribleness of remote learning.
• Universities can go online because these students don't need to be babysat.
• Write-off African Americans.  Promote protecting confederate statues, bridges and military posts.
• In October, look for a sudden re-interest by Kim Jong-un about peace with the USA.  He knows this will be his best chance to get favorable concessions.  This has probably already been worked out in advance.

Switching to my life, midnight Hawaii time we were facing a triple threat.  First, we were in the midst of a pandemic.  Then, the first real hurricane for the East Pacific formed, named Douglas, with the eye now currently projected to pass over the Big Island of Hawaii.  At 8:12 last night a 7.8 earthquake struck the Alaskan peninsula, and there was potential for a tsunami to strike Hawaii at 12:48 AM.

Well, the pandemic is still here, but Hurricane Douglas, while he will reach Category 2 strength, is expected to considerable weaken before reaching our state.  Then, the tsunami alert was cancelled.  What an exciting place to be!  That was the science for today.

However, I will reveal a list of topics to be covered on Wednesdays throughout the year:

• Trees can lived up to 5,000 years, although there is a colony of quaking aspen in Utah that could be 80,000 years old. Puny compared to endoliths which live for millions of years, or a sea grass that could be 200,000 years old.  There was a recent report of fungi from a billion years ago, but they also died almost a billion years ago.  There are glass sponges more than 10,000 years old and Jeanne Calment, the oldest human ever at 122 years.  Why do some species survive so long?  I'll tell you.

• Mount Kilimanjaro is only 200 miles from the equator.  However, there is a glacier at the top 11,700 years old.  How can it survive any hot summer?  Well, the latest news is that global warming could melt it by 2030.

• A submarine volcano just began to form only six months ago between Africa and Madagascar.  It is now 2625 feet high.
• We seem optimistic about those developing vaccines for COVID-19.  Scientists are, believe it or not, finally coming close to a cure for the common cold.

• Ever try to grow a sugar crystal?  I once worked at the Hawaii Sugar Planter's Association.  We grew really large single crystals a few inches long.  The largest crystal apparently is of iron at Earth's inner core with a diameter of 1517 miles.  A gypsum, calcium sulphate, crystal 13 feet long was found in Mexico.  Here is a photo from the Pulpi Geode where the largest is only 7 feet long.

• Heard of Hvaldimar, the friendly beluga whale?  Last year he just showed up off Norway and made a home in the Hammerfast Bay, where authorities fed him.  Where did he come from and why did he allow people to swim with him?  Tune in.

• The most dangerous organism to humans is not COVID-19 but the mosquito, said to have killed half of all Homo sapiens.  I will relate my recent adventures with them.
• Science has shown that stress, in addition to old age and genetics, can turn your hair gray.  Can gray hair become blacker?  Yes, I'm looking into why I feel my hair is becoming less gray.  
• Is it possible to trisect an angle?  Yes and no.

• What is the largest number?  Easy...infinity.  A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes.  The founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1997 on the Stanford campus didn't like their startup name BackRub and thought googol was more appropriate.  They put their graduate students to work and Sean Anderson checked for a domain name and mistakenly typed in google.  It was available, so they became Google.com.  The googolplex is 10 to the googol power.  Graham's number is even larger.

• The current state of:

• cold fusion
• room temperature superconductivity
• genetic cure for aging
• hydrogen economy
• geoengineering solutions for global warming
• Is the neutrino the key to dark energy and matter?

Yesterday I closed with a 5-minute clip that could someday save your life in a specific type of car accident.  Today, something similar, but for when you next take a commercial flight, covering all elements of air travel.  Seven minutes long and an obvious overdub, but a lot more valuable than watching most newscast segments between ads.

Hurricane Douglas heading for Hawaii:

While Douglas will almost surely weaken before getting here, a more recent tracking has him a bit more north, and the eye passing right over my building.

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