The big news today is Israel’s attack on Iran; see the previous post (and below) for details.
Welcome to the tail end of the week; it’s Friday, June 13, 2025 and National Cupcake Lover’s Day, implying that only a single lover of cupcakes is being honored. Here are some fancy ones:
It’s also Weed Your Garden Day, Skeptics Day International, and Sewing Machine Day, observed because:
Thomas Saint of England took out the first patent for a complete sewing machine. He was given patent #1764 in 1790. Some sources say that he received his patent on June 13, explaining why Sewing Machine Day takes when it does. The machine was to have an awl that punched a hole, and then a needle that would go through the hole. It is unknown if Saint created a prototype of his sewing machine, and only the drawings of it survive.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 13 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
NOTE: The articles below were posted yesterday afternoon, and some of the first ones are a bit obsolete:
**Two NYT headlines: “UN Watchdog rules that Iran is not complying with nuclear obligations,” right next to “Israel appears ready to attack Iran, officials in U.S. and Europe say.” The archived versions are, respectively, here and here.)
From the first story:
Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe, a step that could further inflame the Middle East and derail or delay efforts by the Trump administration to broker a deal to cut off Iran’s path to building a nuclear bomb.
The concern about a potential Israeli strike and the prospect of retaliation by Iran led the United States on Wednesday to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and authorize the voluntary departure of U.S. military family members from the Middle East.
It is unclear how extensive an attack Israel might be preparing. But the rising tensions come after months in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has pressed President Trump to seize on what Israel sees as a moment of Iranian vulnerability to a strike.
Mr. Trump waved off another plan by Israel several months ago to attack Iran, insisting that he wanted a chance to negotiate a deal with Tehran that would choke off Iran’s ability to produce more nuclear fuel for a bomb. Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump said he had warned Mr. Netanyahu about launching a strike while U.S. negotiations with Iran were underway.
It is not clear how much effort Mr. Trump made to block Mr. Netanyahu again this time, but the president has appeared less optimistic in recent days about the prospects for a diplomatic settlement after Iran’s supreme leader rejected an administration proposal that would have effectively phased out Iran’s ability to enrich uranium on its soil. Mr. Netanyahu has walked up to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities in the past, only to back off at the last minute.
Word of the U.S. decisions to withdraw personnel from the region, along with a warning from Britain about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after Mr. Trump told The New York Post in a podcast released on Wednesday that he had grown “less confident” about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons.
. . . and from the second:
The International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Thursday that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the first time the U.N. watchdog has passed a resolution against the country in 20 years.
The long-anticipated vote by the agency’s board of governors in Vienna came at a time of high tension over Tehran’s nuclear program, with American and European officials saying they believe that Israel may be preparing an imminent military strike against Iran.
The I.A.E.A. said that Iran had consistently failed to provide information about undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple locations.
The resolution was put forward by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, and passed easily, with 19 votes of the 35-nation board. Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against, and 11 other countries abstained, while two did not vote at all.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry and national atomic energy agency issued a joint statement condemning the vote, calling it political and saying the resolution had “completely called into question the credibility and prestige” of the nuclear watchdog.
The statement added that Iran would now “launch a new enrichment center in a secure location and replace the first-generation machines” at another site with more modern equipment.
Iran had reacted angrily to the prospect of the vote and had threatened to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970. Iran is a signatory but has not ratified a section that would allow inspectors to search areas of the country where they suspect nuclear activity. But the vote was also seen as part of the diplomacy around the fraught negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program between Washington and Tehran.
From the Times of Israel:
US officials believe Israel is ready to carry out an attack on Iran and could launch military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming days, reports suggested early Thursday, even as high-level talks aimed at a diplomatic deal over Tehran’s nuclear activity remained on track for Sunday.
The reports, from US networks NBC and CBS, that Israel was moving toward a long-threatened military strike came hours after the US announced it would evacuate some personnel from the region amid fears they could be targeted by Iran in reprisal actions.
. . . . According to the report, Israel was weighing the option of striking the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure, fearing that Washington could agree to a deal that falls short of its demands regarding Iran ending all nuclear enrichment.
Sources told the news network that they were not aware of any plans in the US to aid Israel in its endeavor to strike Iran, directly or indirectly, in the form of aerial refueling or intelligence sharing.
But the sources said US officials were on alert.
CBS News, citing multiple sources, said US officials have been told Israel is “fully ready to launch an operation into Iran.”
Both reports cited worries that Iran could retaliate against US personnel stationed in neighboring Iraq as the reason the State Department and Pentagon authorized some US officials and their families to leave the region on Wednesday.
I have mixed feeling about this. While I’ve already said that there’s no doubt that Iran is pursuing a bomb, and that Israel, preferably in combination with the U.S., should destroy the bomb-making and uranium-refining facilities, this could well trigger a wider war in the Middle East. There is no way that Iran would not retaliate after such a strike, and then all hell will break loose.
NOTE: The attack, years in the planning, took place, doing considerable damage to Iranian facilities (and officials), and Iran’s attempt to retaliate, by sending 100 drones towards Israel, was unsuccessful (Jordan helped take them down).
*The NYT also reports that five Palestinian workers with a humanitarian aid organization were killed—by Hamas. I feel immensely sad that workers dispensing humanitarian aid were killed, no matter who killed them. But it is unusual that the NYT put Hamas in the headline as the perp (article archived here):
An aid group in Gaza backed by Israel and the United States said that on Wednesday night a bus carrying some of its Palestinian workers was attacked by Hamas, leaving at least five people dead and others injured.
At the time of the attack, the bus was carrying about two dozen of the group’s workers and was en route to an aid distribution site in southern Gaza, according to a statement from the group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some of the workers “may have been taken hostage,” it said, adding that it was still gathering information.
“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” said the foundation, which is run by American contractors. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons, and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others.”
The New York Times could not independently verify the attack. Hamas did not comment on the accusation that it had attacked workers from the group, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The foundation said it held the militant group “fully responsible” for the deaths of “dedicated workers who have been distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.” The group called on the international community to condemn Hamas for the attack.
The aid organization has repeatedly criticized Hamas, saying that for days it had “openly” threatened workers and civilians. On Saturday, the foundation said it was “impossible to proceed” with aid distribution because Hamas had menaced its staff.
Hamas has denied those accusations and has accused the aid group of lacking neutrality.
Of course Israel will be blamed for this, as it has been for distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza:
The United Nations and many humanitarian organizations have accused Israel of “militarizing” aid distribution in Gaza, and have said the group was violating the international organizations’ principles of independence. They have warned that residents could face danger from the Israeli military as they sought food and other aid.
Israel does not want the UN to participate in distributing aid because of its connections to Hamas, particularly through the odious UNRWA, and the UN
*RFK Jr. named eight replacement for the 17 people he fired on the vaccine advisory panel that makes recommendation to the Center for Disease Control. Several of the replacements are known vaccine skeptics.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced eight new picks for a key immunization committee, including vaccine opponents.
Kennedy’s move came two days after abruptly removing all 17 of the prior members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The panel makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including when and how often children and adults should get them.
Kennedy said the new panel would review not just new vaccine recommendations, but existing ones as well.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” he wrote in a post on X. “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”
Kennedy earlier this week promised not to pick “ideological antivaxers” for the committee.
Among his picks are Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a public-health doctorate, who is a board member of the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization that advocates against vaccines. She has said that she became interested in vaccine safety because her child suffered long-term health effects after receiving immunizations.
“Most vaccine injuries are not recognized, acknowledged, treated or compensated,” she said in a 2011 video for NVIC. Many scientists have said vaccine injuries are real but rare and that the benefits of the federally recommended shots outweigh the risks.
Kennedy has also tapped Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who worked on research into several mRNA Covid-19 vaccines before he grew skeptical of the shots. Malone has voiced fears that Covid vaccines come with dangerous, unknown risks. His 2021 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” prompted musicians and podcasters to leave Spotify for allowing Rogan’s podcast to spread what they decried as dangerous coronavirus misinformation.
Retsef Levi, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Kennedy tapped for the panel, called for Covid vaccines to be withdrawn from the market in a 2023 video.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, another Kennedy pick and a former professor of medicine at Harvard University, became known during the pandemic as a critic of coronavirus mitigation measures, such as lockdowns. He has said he was fired from the school for his opposition to vaccine mandates. He has studied vaccine safety monitoring systems.
The other appointees include former ACIP member Dr. Cody Meissner, a pediatrician and infectious-disease specialist respected by other vaccine experts; psychiatrist Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln; emergency physician Dr. James Pagano; and Dr. Michael Ross, a gynecologist.
“This committee as a whole does not deserve public or expert trust,” said Dorit Reiss, a University of California San Francisco law professor who has studied the antivaccine movement. “Most of these people have no scientific expertise related to vaccines.”
The White House was involved in vetting the new members, a White House official said.
Four of the eight are therefore dubious since they’ve come out against vaccines or mandates (granted, some mandates, like closing schools for a long time, were misguided). But this sounds like a panel loaded with members that have an antivax agenda. As I’ve said, I think RFK Jr. may have been Trump’s most dangerous appointment. This mass firing and reappointment supports that supposition.
*An Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London crashed soon after takeoff yesterday, killing most of the people on board:
An Air India passenger plane bound for London Gatwick crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, leaving at least 204 people dead.
The flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew, including 53 British nationals, when it came down in the western Indian city.
Ahmedabad’s police chief told the BBC that 204 bodies had been recovered, while 41 people were being treated for injuries.
GS Malik earlier told news agencies there appeared to be no survivors from the crash, and that some local people would also have died given where the plane came down.
He later said one passenger survived the crash, with Indian media reporting that it was a British national.
Details are still emerging from the scene.
. . . . Air India flight AI171 left Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 13:39 local time (08:09 GMT), Air India said.
It was scheduled to land at London Gatwick at 18:25 BST.
The plane crashed on departure from Ahmedabad – where all operations have since been suspended.
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, the signal from the aircraft was lost “less than a minute after take-off”.
Flight tracking data ends with the plane at an altitude of 625ft (190m).
The plane gave a mayday call to air traffic control, India’s aviation regulator said. No response was given by the aircraft after that.
It crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar. Police told ANI news agency that it had crashed into a doctors’ hostel.
Some of the people on the ground in the doctors’ hostel were also killed. For some reason, the BBC has a whole article on where one surviving British passenger (born in India) was sitting: seat 11A. Will that now become peoples’ lucky seat number? Now I read in the NYT that the lucky guy may have been the only person to survive that crash. On the news last night, it was reported that video of the plane as it was heading to ground showed that the tail flaps were in the wrong position for getting lift, and the landing gear was out, though it should have been retracted. U.S. and British investigators are on the site helping the Indian investigation.
*Finally, from the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we have a rivalry between two Madrid restaurants which both claim to be the world’s oldest. I have eaten in one of them, the first one described below.
In the heart of Spain’s capital, Sobrino de Botín holds a coveted Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest restaurant. Exactly three hundred years after it opened its doors, Botín welcomes droves of daily visitors hungry for Castilian fare with a side of history.
But on the outskirts of Madrid, far from the souvenir shops and tourist sites, a rustic tavern named Casa Pedro makes a bold claim. Its owners assert the establishment endured not just the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the Napoleonic invasion in the early 1800s, but even the War of Spanish Succession at the start of the 18th century — a lineage that would make Casa Pedro older than Botín and a strong contender for the title.
“It’s really frustrating when you say, ‘Yes, we’ve been around since 1702,’ but … you can’t prove it,” said manager and eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales. “If you look at the restaurant’s logo, it says ‘Casa Pedro, since 1702,’ so we said, ‘Damn it, let’s try to prove it.’”
Guiñales, 51, remembers her grandfather swearing by Casa Pedro’s age, but she was aware that decades-old hearsay from a proud old-timer wouldn’t be enough to prove it. Her family hired a historian and has so far turned up documents dating the restaurant’s operations to at least 1750.
That puts them within striking distance of Botín’s record.
Both taverns are family-owned. Both offer Castilian classics like stewed tripe and roast suckling pig. They are decorated with charming Spanish tiles, feature ceilings with exposed wooden beams and underground wine cellars. And both enjoy a rich, star-studded history.
ADBotín’s celebrated past includes a roster of literary patrons like Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene. In his book “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway described it as “one of the best restaurants in the world.” While Casa Pedro may not have boasted the same artistic pedigree, it boasts its own VIPs. Its walls are adorned with decades-old photographs of former Spanish King Juan Carlos I dining in one of its many rooms. The current Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI dines there, too, albeit more inconspicuously than his father.
Well, there’s empirical evidence to support Botin’s claim, but Casa Pedro’s claim rests on shaky ground. I remember going to Botin when my girlfriend and I hitchhiked around Europe for 5.5 months, starting in Athens and working our way to Crete (where we lived for a month), then back to Greece, up to Istanbul, through Europe and eastern Spain down to Morocco, and then back to Spain, where we returned to the U.S. from Madrid. That was a great trip, and we celebrated in Madrid with a dinner in Botin that blew most of our remaining dosh. As Hemingway would say, “we had suckling pig, and it was good.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is superstitious:
Hili: A bad sign.Andrzej: What bad sign?Hili: A black insect crossed my path.
Hili: Zły znak.Ja: Jaki?Hili: Czarny owad przeleciał mi przed nosem.
*******************
From Lynne, a grammatical point:
From Jesus of the Day:
From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored 2. Is this real?
Masih is quiet again. This is from JKR, who has a sharp tongue, but a well-aimed one:
My opinion on magic is the same as my opinion on women with dicks: neither are real. However, if you want to prove me wrong, by all means jump off a roof on a broomstick. pic.twitter.com/jyiFxKJ2Cr
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 11, 2025
From Bryan, a cool old machine. You can see a video here.
Made with 6,000 moving parts, The Writer is a 240-year-old machine created by watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot around 1770-1772.
It can be programmed up to 40 letters or signs.
[📹BBC]pic.twitter.com/HkN1sNd1HN
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 12, 2025
From Malcolm, a d* insists that the cat join the family photo:
Golden retriever picks up cat for family photopic.twitter.com/HYK071k88l
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 29, 2025
Two from my feed. First, a good catch:
This is the moment during a live baseball game where a baseball is heading directly towards a reporter, but camera man intercepts it just in time
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) June 12, 2025
. . . and a mini forest:
A gardener from Canada has dedicated his life to bonsai and has grown his own mini forest in 50 years. pic.twitter.com/MdMo39TOVs
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 11, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-13T09:45:39.638Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. This photo seems to be real (and a giant sequoia in California), based on a postcard I found on eBay via Google Images.
The incredible 3 inch tall Betty Smith, her specially made car, and a normal size tree 🌲
— The English Oak Project (@thekentacorn.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T15:48:34.290Z
A three-minute video on scale worms:
A classic @mbarinews.bsky.social video about SCALE WORMS! #wormwednesday youtu.be/yrlSmxG5yZY?…
— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2025-06-11T14:49:51.259Z
First comment!
This is for Rick’s Quotes :
“Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty.
It is not just something you do to advance in life. This means you are hooked for lifetime learning. Without lifetime learning you people are not going to do very well. You will not get very far in life based on what you already know.”
-attributed to Charlie Munger,
Obtained from a sort of finance/business account on eXtwitter
Yes. The aid workers were killed by Hamas. The news of the Hamas attack was reported so widely that even the New York Times had to acquiesce to the truth.
I’ve seen no attribution other than “Tehran” but I can recognize the buildings as (probably) Tarjish in the north of the city. Tehran is very divided with the tony, snazzy suburbs being against the mountains in the north, and the slums (large) in the south of the city. Lots of buildings like the ruined ones are of an architectural style popular in the 90s – very elite and expensive. Not terrible looking.
Tarjish is where Haniya took his last hotel nap before Israeli room service paid him a visit last year. He was in an IRGC official guest house. There are also large parks and museums/castles of the late Shah there. Cool museums. (you can “visit” many on google.maps)
The strikes (hooray, btw) look very targeted indeed. Israel wants to explode and piss off as few civilians as possible I presume. A good policy in a country whose population (not gvt) are the least antisemitic in the Islamosphere. Remember Israel and the Shah were besties until the religious maniacs took charge in 1979. The Shah gets a VERY bad press – even I believed it – due to lefties hijacking the narrative. I actually met his widow at a uni speech long ago.
Onwards Israeli bombers,
D.A.
NYC
I bet that many in Iran are very much hoping for an outright decapitation of the leadership. That is normally a big no-no in international norms, and what would replace it? Moderates would have little chance in rising to the top.
I wish that were true, but attacks on one’s country generally result in more patriotism and more support for the ruling regime.
I think all hell is going to break out now. I wish this hadn’t happened.
IIRC, Malone is the one who is butthurt because he feels that he should get credit for mRNA vaccines.
(Also, Malone sounds like the name of a crook in Perry Mason.)
Bugsy Malone is a fictional character in a gangster spoof movie; Bugs Moran was a real Capone-era Chicago gangster. From Wikipedia, “Moran was a violent and unstable man who got the nickname ‘Bugs’ because everyone thought he was nuts or ‘buggy'”. The same slang shows up with Bugs Bunny.
Hopefully the current Malone is neither crazy nor a spoof; time will tell.
According to Chat GTP:
The correct form is:
“for fuck’s sake.”
Here’s why:
The phrase is a variation of older constructions like “for God’s sake” or “for heaven’s sake,” where the apostrophe-s shows possession — it’s the sake of fuck, in a crude sense.
“Fuck” is singular here (as in a singular concept), so it takes the ‘s possessive ending.
“Fucks’” would be the plural possessive, which doesn’t make sense in this context unless you’re somehow invoking multiple “fucks” in a very creative and unidiomatic way.
So stick with “for fuck’s sake” — it’s the one that both sounds right and is grammatically correct.
I agree with your analysis. But fucks’ hews to the supreme rule that when apostrophe’s [sic] are sprinkled around in phrases’ because someone thinks the phrase needs a few they should just be tacked on at the end of any word that ends’ in s. This is particularly applicable when no apostrophe at all is needed, as in the famous sign, Apples’ $1.99/lb.
The Grocers’ Apostrophe, made famous by Sir Terry Pratchett.
The lone survivor of that plane crash walked away under his own power like nothing had happened. Only a few small cuts. Amazing luck.
On Indian news I saw a video that seems to have been taken by a passenger during the crash. I don’t know if it was real but it seemed to be. He or she is filming the takeoff when suddenly everything gets jerked around and the image is filled with flames.
Betty Crocker wasn’t a real person.
https://www.pbs.org/food/stories/who-was-betty-crocker
And wonderful news about the IDF strike on Iran. 🇮🇱
There is no such thing as “tail flaps”. There are flaps (the moving things on the wings) or trimmer (the position of the tail plane). It is possible that the pilot indeed retracted the flaps instead of the landing gear. The investigators have the flight recorder, so we’ll find out eventually.
While I pretty much always warn against speculation and urge patience for proper data recovery and analysis in these matters, “Captain Steeeve”, a Boeing 777 pilot who is not always my favorite analyst, gives a good 17 minute video on some of the issues Matthew points to here regarding the B 787 Dreamliner crash. I would term what he does as “soft speculation”. Should be at url
I’m sorry, but the media reasoning about Kennedy’s appointments is simply sloppy and tribal. Let’s start with what it got right. Vicky Pebsworth is the most questionable choice for ACIP and comes closest to what I surmise most people mean by “anti-vax,” when it’s not just a vague political insult. I wouldn’t have put her on the committee, but Michael Mina (former Harvard epidemiologist) and no fan of Kennedy, suggests a silver lining here. His post below assesses each appointment:
https://x.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1932955784230674804
Now let’s go to where the coverage is most wrong. Martin Kulldorff isn’t even remotely an anti-vaxer. He has spent much of his career in vaccine safety, and somehow Harvard managed for a decade not to notice he was “fringe.” During the pandemic, he was removed from the Vaccine Safety Technical subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because he opposed the decision to pause the J&J vaccine; he believed the data showed it should remain available for older, high-risk people, and paused only for women under 50—those in whom blood-clotting issues were being seen. So much for being “anti-vax.”
And, yes, Kulldorff opposed vaccine mandates for COVID, drawing particular attention to the stupidity of firing thousands of health care workers, many who had already recovered from the infection. The scientific burden of proof rests on those who demanded that healthy young people or those who had already recovered from a COVID infection needed to either get a COVID vaccine or lose their jobs, get kicked out of school, or be shunned from “polite” society and public places. What justified these mandates other than rampant tribalism and fear, particularly given the vaccine’s failure to prevent transmission and its increasing ineffectiveness against variants?
I would have named either Dr. Marion Gruber or Dr. Phillip Krause to the committee. Do you know who they are? They would be the former director and deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, both of whom resigned because they believed that the Biden Administration was forcing COVID booster recommendations without sufficient scientific evidence supporting a need for boosters in the general population.
You know who else might agree with me? The parents of the 87% of children who are not “up to date” on boosters. Or the 86% of pregnant women. Or the 72% of Medicare beneficiaries. (For readers outside of the US, those are Americans over 65. All data can be found at the CDC’s Weekly Covid-19 Vaccination Dashboard.) With the vast majority of the country now skipping boosters, it turns out we have become a nation of “anti-vaxers.”
As an adult working in a public school in a, shall I say, vaccine hesitant region, I will note that I have now had COVID three times (ALL exposure in the school) over the last two years during the time everyone is considered exposed (five total since the start), had two teens, that I know of, hospitalized with complications in that time- there have been a suspiciously high number of one to two week absences in this time- as well as the expected influenza issues.
The 87% and 86% and so on that “might agree” are irrelevant. Gravity doesn’t care if you believe in it. Step off he cliff and you will still fall.
The claim that there is insufficient evidence indicating a need for boosters is incorrect, as it is when the same is brought out against flu vax every year. These are rapidly evolving viruses. The data through 2022 supported this, though the cuts in central data reporting at the end of 2022/early 2023 make it more difficult to pull information together. State level databases are still updated in many states, though many now don’t clearly differentiate respiratory diseases (I am speaking to you, New Jersey, among others) giving a reasonable comparison vs historical trends.
(we also have had a rubella resurgence in my region, as well as many more measles and chicken pox cases than officially reported. Yes, we have measles and chicken pox parties here. I love going to the grocery in August, when it is 35C and 90% humidity and the moms are rolling the kids in wearing balaclavas and mittens.)
Sorry, but how does raising an already feverish temperature help? Kill or cure??
It doesn’t. Or, at least, that is not the intent. It keeps the kids from scratching the rash, and hides the visible rash.
It is cruelty to the child to infect them intentionally, and additional cruelty to not provide appropriate medical treatment. It is even worse to bring them to public spaces where others could be infected.
Yet, there is a small subset of people that do all of this. And brag about it.
I always thought it was Elias Howe who invented the first practical sewing machine. I believe he is in the Hall of Fame of Inventors for that invention.