3 Facts, 3 Numbers, 3 Thoughts 

THE FACTS

* There’s an even more contagious strain of COVID here in the US! With a recent surge in cases, reports in the media, and Dr. Deborah Birx’s comments at a recent coronavirus Task Force meeting, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the situation is a lot more dire than it is. But in a recent press briefing, Henry Walke, the CDC’s COVID incident manager, said that though the evidence to date indicates that newly emerging variants spread more easily and quickly, “there is no evidence that these variants cause more severe disease or increase risk of death.” He also said that, according to all available information, current vaccines will be effective against these strains.

* Psychedelic drugs are generating a great deal of interest as an effective treatment for mental disorders that have worsened in the wake of the pandemic. This interest has been reflected in the market, with psychedelic drug stocks soaring in 2020. Companies like Mind Medicine and Numinus saw their shares climb by 1060% and 360%, respectively.

* There are more potential outcomes to a game of chess (10 to the 120th power) than there are atoms in the observable universe (an estimated 10 to the 80th power). That was the conclusion of mathematician Claude Shannon in a paper he wrote in 1950. Shannon calculated his number by assuming that the average game has about 80 total moves. There have been many, more conservative, calculations done since then. But as pointed out on Medium.com, even if we use the most conservative assumptions, and all humans spent all their time playing chess… it would take us millions or billions of years to play all possible combinations.

 THE NUMBERS 

* 59 – the percentage of people with COVID that transmit the virus without showing symptoms. 35% of the transmissions have come from people that eventually developed symptoms but transmitted the virus before those symptoms were evident. 24% of the transmissions were spread by people that never showed symptoms at all (asymptomatic)

* 7.05 billion – the number of times “Baby Shark Dance,” the most-watched video of 2020, was viewed on YouTube. It was followed closely by “Despacito,” with 7.04 billion views, and “Shape of You,” with 5.05 billion.

* $84.5 million – the amount paid for Francis Bacon’s Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus in Sotheby’s first digitally streamed live auction. The painting was won by a collector in New York after a fierce, 10-minute, “socially distanced” bidding war with an online bidder in China.

THE THOUGHTS 

* “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso

* “Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.” – Martin Luther King

* “Few will admit it, but in the commerce of ordinary life, there is no human characteristic more valued than physical beauty.” – Michael Masterson