The return

 

The city of Columbus and its airport John Glenn International.

On the taxiway.  The control tower is seen on the left.

On the way to New York at dusk.  The curvature of the Earth hopefully will convince the Flat Earth society members to change their minds.

I am now in the land of the blue skies and seas, the land I was born at and I call home.

9/11 and its aftermath

 

Twenty years ago, I struggled to absorb the images of fire and smoke wafting from the World Trade Center.

I turned the TV on when the second plane was ready to hit the tower.  I thought it was a movie.

When I later saw the beams twisted and in rubble, it was eerie, very eerie!

It is still hard to process what happened but the melancholy and pain of that day have been replaced by hope as we see the One World Trade Center tower and adjacent buildings in lower Manhattan.

So, what has happened in the interim?  The masterminds behind the attack are incarcerated, and Osama bin Laden was killed.  The Taliban that provided a safe haven to OBL were overthrown but they are again back in charge.  Nearly 3000 people lost their lives in that horrible day and thousand upon thousand more in the wars that followed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other Arab countries.  And the wars ended but the pain and confusion still persist for millions of people. 

The story America told itself in the aftermath was one of resilience but the grief is still alive in our hearts and tears are rushing down when the brutal events of that day and those that followed come to our minds.

Corona Virus Pandemic; a Review and Perspective

May 1^st is a traditional spring holiday in many European countries. This year’s May 1^st is different than any in my memory because the corona virus pandemic is in the minds of most people in the world. (Photo of Porto Rafti, Greece)  

Since its beginning in December 2019, in Wuhan city in Hubei province of China, nearly 3,450,000 cases and 250,000 deaths due to Corona virus have been reported in 210 countries.  During this period, confirmed cases in select countries, are as listed in round numbers; U.S. 1,100,000, Spain 250,000, Italy 210,000, UK 180,000, France 170,000, Germany 165,000, China 84,000, Netherlands 40,000, Sweden 22,000, Ireland 21,000, Austria 16,000, Japan 14,300, S. Korea 10,800, Greece 2,600, and Taiwan 432.(Wuhan and Yangtze river) 

During the same time the deaths per million of inhabitants in the above-mentioned countries are: Spain 532, Italy 467, UK 409, France 364, Holland 267, Sweden 260, Ireland 240, USA 194, Germany 80, Austria 41, Greece 14, S. Korea 5 and Japan 3 and Taiwan 0.3.  Interestingly, while China enacted strict quarantine of the 60 million inhabitants of the Hubei province, Japan let individuals and businesses continue as in pre Covid-19 period but instituted lockdown when the cases spiked.  S. Korea instituted extensive testing early and reported no new cases as of yesterday.  Sweden also allowed its citizens continue their lives and businesses as in the pre Covid-19 epoch with minor exceptions such as not permiting gatherings of more than 50 people.  The vast majority of the remaining countries enacted lockdown schemes of different severity.  

There is no doubt that the total number of individuals infected maybe 10 times higher to the reported due to the large number of asymptomatic patients and also because the tests have a false negative rate as high as 30%.  Mortality statistics from France show deaths 30% in excess of normal levels, over the same time period.  

The Covid-19 shutdowns and lockdowns have been based on the premise that the disease would kill 240,000 million Americans or up to 2 million as the Imperial College of London predicted.  Some models predicted death rates as high as 1-3% while the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a death rate as high as 3.4%. 

Thee newer studies though refute these dire predictions.  The study from Stanford University tested 3,300 individuals for presence of antibodies in their blood that would show if they had previously been infected with the novel coronavirus.

The researchers found that between 2.5% and 4.2% of individuals tested had antibodies against the virus. That translated into 50 to 85 times higher number of  infections comparing to the known cases.  This suggests that the large majority of people who are infected by the corona virus remain asymptomatic. The authors also estimated that the death rate due to the Covid-19 is somewhere in the range of 0.12% to 0.2%.

A study from China that was published in BMJ found that 130 of 166 new infections (78%) were asymptomatic.  

A study from New York published in the NEJM examined 215 women entering two hospitals to give birth. Of expectant mothers who tested positive for active infections, 88% were asymptomatic at the time of admission.

If the findings of the three studies are true one may wonder why do we lockdown, if the disease is so widely spread and has infected large number of people worldwide.  

The IHME of the University of Washington projected 82,141 deaths from Corona virus in the U.S. by August 4, 2020. While the CDC estimates that in 2019-2020 season in the U.S. which just ended, there were 39 to 56 million flu cases and 24,000-62,000 deaths.

The more I look at the number of confirmed cases and deaths due to the pandemic the more I realise that certain unique patterns from different countries begin to evolve.  I think we should all learn from the Swedish, S Korean and especially Taiwanese experiences.  The deaths per million of inhabitants in Sweden are 260, in S Korea’s are 5, while Taiwan’s is a mere 0.3 per million.  It is axiomatic that we study how Taiwan’s tamed Covid-19, with sound hygienic practices like wearing masks and/or avoiding congested places, washing our hands and coughing or sneezing into our elbows and the most important early diagnosis of an impeding endemic. If more countries can replicate those, we can achieve death rates as low as that of Taiwan while waiting for a vaccine and/or drugs against the virus to be developed.

A Sad Day for World's Aviation

Flight MH370 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard, went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.  It is presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast.  Search and rescue operations were initiated by many nations.  Vietnamese pilots report two large oil slicks in the region of the presumed crash.  I am writing this post as a memorial to those who perished and to express my sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones.

The deadliest aviation-related disaster of any kind, considering fatalities on both airplanes and on the ground, was the destruction of World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  On that morning two hijacked airplanes crashed into the towers destroying and killing 2,752, the vast majority of them occupants and or emergency personnel responding to the disaster. In addition, 184 were killed on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon and 40 were killed on the fourth hijacked plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.   The total number of fatalities that day was 2,977.

The collision between two 747 airplanes that occurred on March 27, 1977 on the runway of Tenerife North Airport, on Tenerife, one of the Canary islands caused 583 fatalities, and is the deadliest accident in aviation history. 

The following is partial list of major air-disasters of the last 30 years.

The crash of Japan Airlines 123, on August 12, 1985 due to an explosive decompression made the 747 uncontrollable and caused the demise of 520 passengers, which is the highest number of fatalities in a single aircraft accident

On 25 July 2000, Air France 4590, a Concorde flight, crashed, resulting in the death of 109 people on board, as well as 4 people on the ground. Although Concorde had a very good safety record, this event was the beginning of the end for supersonic plane.  

On 31 October 1999, Egypt Air 990, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people on board. The National Transportation Safety Board report concluded the First Officer intentionally dove the aircraft into the ocean.

On 12 November 1996, a mid-air collision between Saudia 763 and Air Kazakhstan 1907 was the result of the Kazakh pilot flying lower than the assigned altitude. All 349 passengers and crew on board the two aircraft died.

On 17 July 1996, TWA 880, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board. 

In Greek mythology, Icarus (Ancient Greek: Ικαρος) is the son of Daedalus, a talented Athenian craftsman, who built the Labyrinth for King Minos to house the Minotaur.   While father and son attempted to escape Crete with feathers attached to their arms, Icarus ignored his father instructions not to fly too close to the sun that caused melting of the wax and made him to fall into the sea and drown.  The nearby island, Ikaria and the sea were named after him.  Icarus is the first man who flew and the first air fatality.