Patrick Comerford
This blog is reaching more and more readers at a phenomenal rate this month, and passed a new milepost of 24.5 million readers late last night Irish time or early this morning Sarawak time today (22/23 February 2026). This comes only three days after it passed the milepost of 24 million readers last Friday (20 February 2026), having reached the 23.5 million mark three days before that (17 February 2026), 23 million readers only five days before that (12 February 2026), and 22.5 million earlier this month (4 February).
These figures follow passing the landmarks of 22 million hits late last month (20 January) and 21.5 million hits a week before that (13 January). At the end of 2025, this blog had 21 million hits by New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), with almost 2.5 million visitors throughout December (2,423,018).
So far this year, there have been more than 3.5 million hits or visitors for 2026. This means, this blog has passed the half million mark five times this month alone, compared to twice last month, and five times in December.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached within the past week alone. It then took more than another year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. This blog reached the 10 million mark a year ago (12 January 2025), almost 15 years later. In little more than 13 months since then, another 14.5 million hits have been counted.
Throughout last year and into this year, the daily figures were overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog have been in this month so far, one was last month, two were in December last and two were in January 2025:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 195,391 (20 February 2026)
• 190,467 (21 February 2026)
• 188,376 (19 February 2026)
• 183,317 (22 February 2026)
• 166,155 (15 December 2025)
• 156,311 (18 February 2026)
• 146,944 (14 December 2025)
• 145,259 (17 February 2026)
• 144,935 (16 February 2026)
The latest figure of 24.5 million is all the more staggering as more half of those hits have been within the past nine months, since May 2025. The rise in the number of readers seems to have been phenomenal throughout last year, and the daily figures are overwhelming at times, currently running at almost 80,000 a day. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 24.5 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 24.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 24.5 million people?
• What does £24.5 million, €24.5 million or $24.5 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
The population of the Philippines is estimated at 24.5 million, the Red River Delta region of Vietnam has a population of 24.5 million people, Shanghai has 24.5 million permanent residents along with another 5 million people regarded as a floating population, and the immigrant population in the US includes 24.5 million naturalised citizens and 21.6 million non-citizens.
The number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Horn of Africa is said to be about 24.5 million people.
There are 24.5 million voters in Iraq, 24.5 million voters took part in the first-round of voting in presidential election in Iran in 2024, and there were 24.5 million registered voters in Algeria’s presidential election in 2024.
Here in Malaysia, the country welcomed 24.5 million visitors in the first seven months of last year, between January and July 2025. Turkish Airlines carried 24.5 million passengers in the third quarter of 2024, while 24.5 million people visited Moscow in 2023.
Malaysia generates 24.5 million units of e-waste annually. Many of these discarded gadgets end up mishandled by unregulated recyclers, exposing workers to hazardous chemicals; illegally dumped, polluting the air and harming communities; or worsening Malaysia’s waste crisis, as landfills near capacity, risking an environmental emergency.
Soccer is said to have 24.5 million fans in Italy.
British pubs expect to sell a total of 24.5 million pints during the entire Six Nations Rugby matches.
24.5 million sq metres is 24,500 sq km, and that’s roughly the same size of Rwanda.
Elvis Presley’s former home in Los Angeles was put on the market last year with an asking price of $24.5 million. Elvis lived for six years in the part-modern, part-French Regency home in Beverly Hills designed by the architect Rex Lotery after he bought the house in 1967 for $400,000.
Some 24.5 million viewers watched Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 on 15 networks, according to Nielsen Media Research. Perhaps not surprisingly, Fox News led the viewership figures.
It emerged last September that YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump after he was suspended from the platform in 2021 – and that would pay for a lot of bling in the Oval Office, or the equivalent of the largest-ever medical malpractice settlement in the State of California.
And 24.5 million minutes is 46 years, 7 months, and 12 days, or almost 17,014 days, or more than 408,333 hours. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 46½ years to reach today’s 24.5 million mark.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry. These days, though, about 100 people on average are reading my daily prayer blog posted on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 people or more each week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 24 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
