Monthly Archives: April 2021

197 million, 60%, perhaps even 75% of Americans are immune!

Washington fruit
growers’ foreign sales challenged by
competition for ocean shipping containers
Nearly 28% of Washington state apples were shipped to 60 different countries during the 2018-19 season.
Exporting apples and other agriculture commodities remains a challenge due to impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, longstanding trade disputes with several countries and a lack of available shipping containers from ocean carriers.
U.S. demand for products made in China, such as personal protective equipment for COVID-19, furniture and toys, increased considerably at the end of last year.
The demand has driven ocean carriers to prioritize getting shipping containers back to China as quickly as possible to get imports to the U.S. and other countries.
That has resulted in ocean carriers opting to leave the U.S. with empty shipping containers rather than filling them up with U.S.-made products, including apples grown in this state.
Info: shpr.fyi/fruitshipping

Remember the 1984 cookie cutter three-ton hunk of earth that got up and moved 73 feet away?

Weird news report from 1984 near Grand Coulee Dam in Eastern Washington:
Quoted from an unidentified 1984 publication:
“No one can figure out how, but a chunk of earth weighing tons was plucked out of a wheat field, as though someone used “a giant cookie cutter,” and put down, right side up, 73 feet away. “All we know for sure is that this puzzle piece of earth is 73 feet away from the hole it came out of,” said Greg W. Behrens, a geologist with the Bureau of Reclamation at Grand Coulee Dam.”
The displaced slab, mostly soil held together by roots, is about 10 feet long and 7 feet wide. Its thickness varies from 2 feet at one end to about 18 inches at the other. The shape and thickness of the piece exactly match the hole that was left behind, just like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, though it was rotated about 20 degrees. There are no marks to indicate machines were used, the Seattle Times reported Friday, and the land is fairly flat.
Watch the Seattle King5 TV News report:
https://youtu.be/JxpBc64mtYE


Supermassive black holes appear before universe had grown enough for them to accumulate

In 2017, astronomers started finding monster black holes in the very early universe. Contain-ing roughly a billion times the mass of our Sun, these black holes were surrounded by disks of in-falling matter shining so intensely that we can detect them across immense stretches of space and time.
These gravitational giants existed when the universe was only 700 million years old, or 5 percent its current age. At that point in cosmic history, the uni-verse was still a toddler. Gravity was just beginning to rein in clouds of gas and dark matter to form structures that would later evolve into mature spiral and elliptical galaxies. Stars were beginning to pop into being, but they existed in far fewer numbers than they do today.
According to the traditional picture of black hole formation and growth, the universe at this time simply had not existed long enough for black holes to bulk up to a billion solar masses. So, based on our general understanding of how black holes form and grow, these black holes should not exist.
And yet they do — posing a major challenge that astrophysicists have yet to unravel.
Info: shpr.fyi/blackholes

Yakima fairground
mass vaccination
site expanded

Since last Wednesday, the capacity of the recently opened Yakima Fairgrounds site in-creased from 200 to 1,200 vaccine doses each day and operations expanded from five to seven days a week.
Yakima’s center is primarily set up as a drive-thru site, but individuals also can walk up. Those driving should use Gate 15, and those walking on to the site should use Gate 1. People who need a fare-free ride can call 211.
The hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, except for Thursday when the hours are noon to 6 p.m. People can register at https://prepmod.doh.wa.gov/ or call 1-800-525-0127.
Since last Wednesday, vac-cine eligibility expanded to restaurant, food service, construction and manufacturing workers; anyone 60 and older; and anyone with two or more underlying conditions. Those previously eligible still qualify.
Info: shpr.fyi/fairvaccine

Effective April 15, all Washingtonians over the age of 16 will be eligible
Washington governor announced that effective April 15, all Washingtonians over the age of 16 will be eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.
Info: shpr.fyi/blackhole

A note about the thermometer above:
Change: Immunity required for herd immunity is now estimated to be at least 75%.
The number of Infection & Recovery (Dark Green) I’ve used is just the actual number known and reported by CDC.
However, CDC, Dr. Fauci and others suspected and reported that very many additional, originally perhaps 30% of the U.S. population, had been infected and recovered without symptoms, without even knowing they were sick or had COVID. These cannot be not counted.
Probably the same percentage of those 30% originally estimated additional infected & recovered are among the 51%, now vaccinated so I have reduced the original 30% unknown recovered number by the percent vaccinated, so now to 15%.
I have added this 15% of us who are probably immune as a lightly colored green section.
This would bring our real to-tal American immunity to around 75%- now equal to the 75% herd immunity goal!
With herd immunity, the virus continues to be spread by infected symptomatic victims, but that virus can’t spread well because 75% of the people it reaches are immune.
This is the reason that the daily number of new infections and hospitalizations has plummeted so wonderfully.
With herd immunity, masks and shutdowns may no longer be justifiable!

Dave Bunting

173 million, 52%, perhaps even 69% of Americans are immune!

Japanese Beetles, threat to crops, jobs and economy, found in Grandview
OLYMPIA — The state Department of Agriculture is asking residents and farmers to keep an eye out for Japanese beetles, the latest invasive pest posing a threat to local crops.
The beetle, which feeds on roses, grapes, apples, hops and turf grasses, among other plants, was discovered in traps in Sunnyside and Grandview last year, prompting concern.
It’s the first time the beetles were found so far inland, according to a WSDA news release issued Thursday. Previously they only had been found at ports and other entryways into the state.
If Japanese beetles were to become established, it would have trade and economic impacts in addition to direct damage to numerous state crops.
WSDA issued a pest alert at the time. On March 1, a Grandview resident further reported the Japanese beetles had devoured her roses the previous summer and provided photos showing flowers covered with the pests. She reported picking off as many as 75 beetles from her roses in a single day.
The agency and Washington State University have scheduled an educational webinar at 9 a.m. April 1 in the hopes of getting help in identifying where else the beetle might be located.
Sightings, including those from last year, can be reported online at agr.wa.gov/beetles, at PestProgram@agr.wa.gov, or calling 1-800-443-6684.
The website also includes information about identifying the pests.
Info: shpr.fyi/japbeetle

Sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) to be released
Inexplicable sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will be released for public scrutiny in June — including a UFO that broke the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom.
Speaking on Fox News, the former director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said Saturday (March 20) that the sightings are “difficult to explain.” Ratcliffe, who served in the Trump administration, said he’d hoped to declassify the reports during his tenure but that they will be released by the Pentagon by June 1.
It’s not the first time the military has released strange reports, and even videos, of UFOs, known in military parlance as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). But check your excitement, the military is generally more concerned about whether UAPs might be secret aircraft or weapons developed by other nations than it is about finding evidence of ET in our midst.
Info: shpr.fyi/ufojune
COVID Reinfection:
In two groups each of about 17,000 people, none of whom were vaccinated, one group having had been infected and recovered from COVID, the other group having not been infected: 213 became infected with COVID who were not previously infected and recovered, compared with only one who became infected who had been previously infected and recovered.
So having been infected and recovered from COVID offers very strong- like 99.6%- immunity but not quite 100% perfect immunity to being reinfected (and these results are still questionable– the chance of reinfection may still indeed be zero.) The chance of being reinfected after recovering from infection is much higher for older people so even people who’ve been infected and recovered should be vaccinated.
Governments’ strong pushes for continued masking and shutdowns is half based on this small chance of reinfection (they doubt the science.)
These record analysis results were published Mar. 17, 2021 in The Lancet, the British equivalent to the U.S. JAMA.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00575-4/fulltext
COVID Variants:
All three of the FDA-approved vaccines against COVID-19 show efficacy against the mutated strains of the virus, according to an analysis by the New York Blood Center (NYBC) published in Science Magazine.
NYBC found that the Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna vaccines create enough antibodies to fight the virus variants, according to the article “Vaccine efficacy probable against COVID-19 variants” Mar. 20, 2021, by Dr. Christopher D. Hillyer and Dr. Larry Luchsinger, in Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.
“The Moderna vaccine conferred substantial protection from infection… Similar data were obtained using the Pfizer (10) and Johnson & Johnson (11) vaccines. In each case, the samples suggest that the vaccines will be effective against mutant strains.”
Governments’ strong pushes for continued masking and shutdowns is half based on remaining questions about the likelihood of additional new variants coming as well as the effectiveness of the vaccines against the variants (they doubt the science).
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6534/1116.1


A note about the thermometer below:
The number of Infection & Recovery (Dark Green) I’ve used is just the actual number known and reported by CDC.
However, CDC, Dr. Fauci and others suspected and reported that very many additional, originally perhaps 30% of the U.S. population, had been infected and recovered without symptoms, without even knowing they were sick or had COVID. These cannot be not counted.
Probably the same percentage of those 30% originally estimated additional infected & recovered are among the 32%, now vaccinated so I have reduced the original 30% unknown recovered number by the percent vaccinated, now to 19%.
I have added this 19% of us who are probably immune as a lightly colored green section.
This would bring our real total American immunity to around 66%- getting close to the 70% herd immunity goal!
This is the reason that the daily number of new infections and hospitalizations has plummeted so drastically and wonderfully.
With herd immunity, new infections drop to low levels!

Dave Bunting