WILL THOSE INCOMING COMET AND ASTEROID THREATEN LIFE ON PLANET EARTH?

  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        703       85

Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30       3880    14748       1224       299      465

Jan     14       4142    15512       1151       189      712              

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

Mar     2        1989     9490        1726       110      194

April   6         906     11787         4211       631       37

May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59 

June   1         287    10637         2346      3205      95

 July   7          251      8440        1595        817      411

Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532     423 

Sept  22       2228     9326          839        279      124

        29         2190      8859         643        309      108

Oct    6         2102       8255         543        315       59

        19          2005      7528         401       160        80 

        27          1594      8671         433        734       62 

Nov   3          1436      7830         186        458        23

        24          1594      8270         176        396        22 

Dec    1          1633      8475         266        477        28

          8          1324      7894         231        159         36

        17          1653      7359         126        289         35 

        22          1634      7686         137        434         99

        23          1149       6942        100        374         75

        29          1777       7393         147        268         81

        30         1354       6758          154        220       126 

Jan    5         1802       7551          133        325       110  

Summary:

• Well, the Omicron variant is certainly causing havoc, increasing new deaths in the USA.
• However, the jump to 1802 new deaths remains considerably below a year ago, when it was 4142, continuing into February with 4005 on 3February2021.
• #2 in new deaths was Russia with 828 and #3 Poland 631.
• There are two Omicron epicenters:  U.S. and Europe.
• Vietnam had 17,017 new cases and 19 new deaths.
• South Korea had 4,443 new cases and 57 new deaths.
• China had 91 new cases and no new deaths.
• Japan only had 1 new death yesterday, and Indonesia, with double the population of Japan, had 4 new deaths.
• The number of new cases in the U.S. was a fearsome 704,661, an increase from the day before when it was 595,810.
• That number of new cases about equals the sum of the next three countries (new cases/million):
• #1  U.S.  704,661 (2110)
• #2  France  332,252 (5072)
• #3  UK  194,747 (2847)
• #4  Italy  189,109 (3136)
• States new cases (new cases/million):
• New York  80,897 (4149)
• Florida  59,487 (2767)
• California  55,323 (1298)
• Alaska  886 (1213) new cases with no new deaths
• Hawaii  2611 (1865) new cases with no new deaths
• Vermont  805 (1290) new cases with 2 new deaths

It was a year ago today that the U.S. Congress was invaded.  Some thoughts:

• The only previous attack on the Capitol was in 1814 when British troops set fire to it. 
• Blame intelligence or whatever, but how can you plan for something like this when the last time was more than two centuries ago, and close by was the enemy.

• 
  727 have been charged. Remember, 7 people died, including three police officers. The judicial system decided to first convict misdemeanors.  Thus, the sentences were relatively light.
• The next phase will be for felonies, and the sentences will go up.

• 
  The final group will be leaders who organized the riot (and according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, even those who were pre-meditating before that event), and could include active Congressional members up to former president Donald Trump.

• 
  Clearly, the Democrats want to use this event to increase their Congressional numbers on November 8, 2022.  They want Trump to continue to lie, for just that simple act of immorality will ruin the Republican party if they continue to hold back in accordance.

• 
  The House committee leading the investigation has a plan to prosecute leaders of the attack.
• Republican development for the coup actually began before the 2021 presidential election.

• 
  It started with Trump warning that there would be election fraud. 
• Ironically, if there was any hanky-panky, the Republicans were the ones trying to limit voting and such, including Postmaster General DeJoy, who will finally soon be replaced.

• 
  If Trump lost, the strategy was to gain the support of Republican-controlled state legislatures to somehow reverse the vote count.  The federal courts stopped this.
• Failing that, they wanted Vice President Pence to on January 6 declare the electoral count void, leading to the House voting on who would be president.

• 
  The voting would be by states, so Trump would be the victor.
• The riot itself, if anything, scared Pence to instead do the right thing, something he might have done anyway.  But if this insurrection did not occur, who knows what would have happened.

• 
  Donald Trump got close to remaining as president....but not really, for what killed the coup was the 3January2021 letter released by all ten living former defense secretaries, including the by-then-resigned Mark Esper, declaring the election was over and Biden had prevailed.

• 
  Also, Trump needed the support of the military, but that public letter and the patriotism of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and his commanders, scuttled the effort.
• I would not be surprised if some congressional members and Donald Trump himself get indicted by the summer.

Did you see Don't Look Up, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence and Jonah Hill?  It's showing for free on Netflix.  Has to do with a comet that destroys Planet Earth.  Yup, I gave away the ending.  Rotten Tomatoes did not particularly like it, bestowing 55/77 scores.

Anyway, let's get real.  According to Space.com, megacomet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (MCBB) is the find of the decade.  

• This comet is the largest icy body ever identified and perhaps more than 100 miles in diameter.  

• 
  That popular Hale-Bopp comet of 1997 was 37 miles across and was visible to the naked eye for 18 months, twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811.  Came as close as 1.315 AU, or 120 million miles.
• Halley's Comet (right), incidentally, which came in 1986, and will return in 2061, is only 6.8 miles in diameter.
• 
  MCBB has already sprouted a tail even though it is so far away from our sun.
• This comet will pass by our Earth in ten years, but, as of now only as close as the orbit of Uranus and Saturn, which is about a billion miles away.

While we ponder about that incoming megacomet, did you know that asteroid 7482, with a diameter of almost a mile, will on January 18 be shooting past us at a speed of 43,000 miles per hour only 1.24 million miles away?  That would be around five times the distance of the moon from us.  That Don't Look Up asteroid was a little more than 5 miles in diameter and was a large piece of rock.

But back to that arriving comet, The Daily Beast said:  The Most Monstrous Comet Ever Known is Headed Straight for Us.  It is 20 times larger than the asteroid from that film.  Further, the speed and conformation of a comet causes nine times more damage than an asteroid.  To calm you down, though, there are so many more asteroids out there that the likelihood of a major impact from an asteroid is 100 times greater than from a comet.  Plus the article grossly exaggerated the truth about the headed straight for us statement.

Sent to me today:

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