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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, "crystal ball" in particular: We don't have a crystal ball but researchers try to make their best coronavirus estimates based on facts. My comments: Researchers are not fortune tellers who look into their crystal ball and sees a perfectly clear picture. Presumably, alright, which enables them to make firm and definite predictions about your future. Researchers do not work like that. Researchers can only make their guesses, estimates based on facts, facts and findings. They use their findings to predict future trends surrounding the coronavirus, which is still all the rage in America, among other countries. The crystal ball is the round ball which is shiny and almost transparent, into which spiritualists and others look in order to tell fortunes and make predictions. Crystal, the natural mineral being glass-like and clear looking, has given quite a few idioms in the English language. People say, for example, it's as clear as crystal to me, meaning something is clear and not confusing. Or, the picture on this high-definition TV is crystal clear, meaning perfectly clear. Well, coronavirus researchers cannot promise to see the future as clearly as someone seeing into the crystal ball. I remember watching a BBC program years ago, in which a fortune teller sees everything, sees everything crystal clear. He tells a man who's apparently come to inquire how a friend of his, who died in a traffic accident, is doing over there - in heaven. Your friend, the fortune teller says, tells me he'll be playing football tomorrow. He wears a Liverpool shirt. He says they're playing Chelsea. | 
