Welcome to Thursday, October 23, 2025, and National Boston Cream Pie Day. This is not a pie but a cake, and was supposedly invented in Boston by a chef at the Parker House (a hotel that was also home of the Parker House roll). Here’s a luscious picture of that cream-filled cake:
It’s also National Canning Day, National Croc Day (the ugly shoe, not the reptile), and National Mole Day (the chemical term), the last one described this way: “It takes place on October 23 each year, between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m., to commemorate Avogadro’s number, which is roughly equivalent to (6.022 x 1023).”
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 23 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The AP reports that over 400 “anti-science bills” (most of them health measures) are being considered by state legislatures. Whoopee: we’re all gonna die!
More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law.
An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society. Around 30 bills have been enacted or adopted in 12 states.
. . .Trump administration officials are directing activists to push anti-science legislation in the states – where public health authority rests – with the ultimate goal of changing laws and minds nationally.
The effort normalizes ideas fueled by the anti-vaccine movement that Kennedy has helped lead for years. His Make America Healthy Again agenda masks anti-science ideas while promoting goals such as making food more natural or reducing chemicals. Meanwhile, vaccination rates continue to fall, allowing the infectious diseases measles and whooping cough to make comebacks as Kennedy has sought to broadly remake federal policies on public health matters including fluoride and vaccines.
The Dahlbergs and others are fighting a strong anti-science movement that stresses “health freedom” but disputes proven health measures. Experts say global vaccine efforts have saved more than 150 million lives since 1974, cavities have declined dramatically since community water fluoridation began in 1945, and milk pasteurization has saved millions from foodborne illness.
Despite those successes, activists spread false conspiracy theories, some dating back decades, that safe vaccines injure or kill large numbers of people, that fluoride is used to poison the population, or that pasteurization makes milk less nutritious and primarily benefits the dairy industry.
In its analysis of legislation, AP focused on these three public health policies, which have clear medical evidence behind them and are targets of the Make America Healthy Again movement. AP searched 2025 legislation in all 50 states, analyzing more than 1,000 bills collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the bill-tracking software Plural for whether they undermined science-based protections for human health.
Anti-vaccine bills – 350 of them – were by far the most common. They come at the issue from various angles: barring discrimination against unvaccinated people, creating the criminal offense of vaccine harm, requiring blood banks to test for evidence of vaccinations and instituting a 48-hour vaccine waiting period.
Legislators acknowledge they sometimes draw inspiration from other states: Bills in numerous places target mRNA vaccines, which were credited with saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two bills in Minnesota falsely designate them as “weapons of mass destruction.”
Here’s where the bills come from (the SE U.S. and middle-South U.S. are of course the hot spots. From the AP article:
How do you fight “false facts” like this. You can throw all the statistics about vaccinations at people you want, and show them that the benefits outweigh the risks, but they’re always going to concentrate on the risks. When I think that people can’t be so dumb, I remember that 71% of Americans still think that gods had a hand in human evolution (37% creationists and 34% people who think god tweaked evolution), while only 24% of Americans have a naturalistic view of human evolution. (And remember: we have plenty of fossils!)
*Despite Trump’s promises, nearly all of the East Wing of the White House has now been demolished to make way for his huge 1000-seat ballroom.
“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”
A White House spokesman said that the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt.”
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.
“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.
A tweet sent in by reader Simon:
Trump’s construction of the Epstein Ballroom continues today. Can only imagine he’ll be renting it out for many junior proms. pic.twitter.com/kvfvziT2mb
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 22, 2025
Who would have thought that Trump would try to wreck the White House as well as the country? Did he vet the plans with the American public, or even the agencies responsible? Nope; see the video below:
Here’s a new video of the wreckage and a historing mourning the destruction:
*Over at the NYT, Bret Stephens explains “Why Mamdani frightens Jews like me.” (Article archived here.) Stephens says that Mamdani isn’t an antisemite but then suggests that he is.
Readers of this column, particularly those inclined to vote for Mamdani, should at least pause to consider the reasons.
A good place to start is to concede that nothing in the public record suggests Mamdani is antisemitic — taking the narrowest view of what the word implies. He has spoken of the “crisis of antisemitism” in New York as “something that we have to tackle.” He has condemned the hate crimes this year in Washington and in Boulder, Colo. And he’s reached out to Jewish communities of various stripes, promising that Zionists would be welcome in his administration.
But Mamdani is also a longtime anti-Zionist of a peculiarly obsessed sort. Three lesser-known points of his biography stand out.
I still think that nearly everyone who calls themselves an “anti-Zionist” is at bottom an anti-Semite. Israel exists and has since 1948. Suggesting it should be expunged (presumably by displacing its residents or making them live-cheek-by-jowl with terrorists, is antisemitic.) But let’s proceed:
First, as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, where [Mamdani] helped found the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, he broke off collaboration with the student arm of the left-wing Jewish group J Street, which supports Palestinian statehood, opposes Israeli settlements, and is roundly critical of the Israeli government.
Why? Because J Street supports Israel as “a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.” This was too much for Mamdani and his comrades in S.J.P., for whom working with J Street was a form of normalization. Mamdani, who to this day does not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, also called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Bowdoin’s president rightly dismissed that notion for “stifling discussion and the free exchange of ideas.”
The second was a rap song Mamdani wrote in 2017, called “Salaam.” “My love to the Holy Land Five, you better look ’em up,” he crooned.
His critics did: The Holy Land Foundation was an ostensible charity convicted in 2008 of funneling $12 million to Hamas; the five defendants in the case received prison sentences of 15 to 65 years for crimes including money laundering, tax fraud and support of terrorism.
Finally, a few months before the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Mamdani introduced a bill in the State Assembly that could have jeopardized the tax-exempt status of virtually every pro-Israel charity. The bill, noted Alex Bores, a fellow assemblyman and a Democrat, “is not aimed at improving regulations of nonprofits broadly, or even applying standards which would apply across the board.” Rather, it “singularly applies to organizations providing aid to a specific country and its people. This is immediately suspicious.”
What stands out about this list is the affinity for extremists, the double standards, and the monomania. Especially the monomania.
. . . .What does it mean for Jewish New Yorkers that a mayoral candidate who pledges to fight antisemitism also proudly avows the very ideology that is the source of so much of the hatred Jews now face? Why, right after Oct. 7, could he do no better than to issue a mealy-mouthed acknowledgment that Jews had died the day before? Why couldn’t he even denounce the perpetrators
Now if that’s not anti-Semitism (granted, one that’s well disguised), I don’t know what is. I’m just glad I don’t have to vote in this election, and am worried that the eagerness with which even many Jews embrace this “anti-Zionist” candidate shows something about the Zeitgeist. It also shows that if you’re a “charming” Democrat, you’ve got it made.
*Jared Kushner, who did a lot to get the Gaza ceasefire going, now has a new plan for what’s going to happen next.
The U.S. and Israel are considering a plan that would divide Gaza into separate zones controlled by Israel and Hamas, with reconstruction only taking place on the Israeli side as a stopgap until the militant group can be disarmed and removed from power.
Vice President JD Vance and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner summarized the thinking in a news conference Tuesday in Israel, where they had arrived to press both sides to abide by the current cease-fire, under which Israel pulled back its troops so that it now controls about 53% of the enclave.
Vance said there are two regions in Gaza, one relatively safe and the other incredibly dangerous, and that the goal is to geographically expand the area that is safe. Until then, Kushner said, no funds for reconstruction would go to areas that remain under Hamas’s control, and the focus would be on building up the safe side.
“There are considerations happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” Kushner said, referring to Israel’s military by its initials.
Arab mediators are alarmed by the plan which, they said, the U.S. and Israel have brought up in peace talks. Arab governments strongly oppose the idea of dividing Gaza, arguing it could lead to a zone of permanent Israeli control inside the enclave. They are unlikely to commit troops to police the enclave on those terms.
A senior administration official said it is a preliminary idea and updates would be given in the coming days.
I doubt this plan will fly, though it’s clever to allot funds for reconstruction of only the Israel-controlled part of Gaza. But I doubt that the Palestinians will agree to this plan, and Israel has demanded that Hamas lay down its arms now. The new plan, on other words, abrogates the old one as it leaves Hamas in power in some areas, and do you doubt that Hamas won’t get money from places like Qatar or European countries to help with “reconstruction” of the southern part of Gaza? But of course no interim plan seems feasible right now, and this is as good as any. Eventually, though, Hamas will have to surrender, or the war will never end.
*You’ve probably heard that 28-year-old U.S. chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky just died, and while the cause of death hasn’t been formally released, it seems likely that he killed himself after being hounded on social media and attacked by a former world chess champion for “online cheating”. The BBC reports:
The world chess federation (Fide) has said it is examining public attacks former world champion
made against Daniel Naroditsky before the US grandmaster’s death.
Fide CEO Emil Sutovsky told the Reuters news agency it was “looking into” the Russian’s previous comments accusing Naroditsky, who died this week aged 29, of online cheating.
Before his death, Naroditsky denied any wrongdoing and indicated the controversy had taken its toll on him in his final Twitch broadcast.
Kramnik told Reuters he did not want to comment on Sutovsky’s statement, saying that he would “rather tell the story in whole”.
Naroditsky’s family announced his “unexpected” death in a statement released by his club, the Charlotte Chess Centre, on Monday. No cause of death was given.
Kramnik also indicated on X he was planning to take legal action against “all those falsely blaming me”. He described Naroditsky’s death as a “tragedy” that the police should investigate, adding: “I am ready to provide all information required.”
. . . . Naroditsky was a popular player, teacher and commentator. He was a leading figure in online chess with hundreds of thousands of followers – who knew him as Danya – across Twitch and YouTube.
Some prominent figures in the chess community – including world number two Hikaru Nakamura, former world champion Magnus Carlsen and Indian grandmaster Nihal Sarin – have condemned Kramnik’s conduct.
Carlsen described the way Naroditsky was treated as “horrible”, while Sarin said on X that Kramnik “needs to pay for what he’s doing,” adding that the late Naroditsky had been under “immense pressure” from his rival’s accusations.
Here’s a video in which two grieving friends remember Naroditsky (the video really ends at 2:53). If suicide was the cause, it’s horrible to think how destructive the online campaign was to his psyche. By all accounts, Naroditsky was a great guy.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is pondering his existence:
Hili: What are you doing?
Andrzej: Just trying to refurnish my world.
In Polish:
Hili: Co ty robisz?
Ja: Próbuję przemeblować mój świat.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From Cat Memes, a lovely moggy (don’t tell me it’s AI!):
From Give Me a Sign:
From Maish: A woman blinded in one eye by the Iranian regime got married (do read the whole text of the first tweet):
The reaction to the leaked video of Ali Shamkhani’s daughter’s wedding came swiftly, not just from critics or exiles, but from the wounded heart of Iran itself.
Niloofar, a young woman who was shot in the eye during the 2022 uprising, shared this photo on Instagram after her own… https://t.co/HvWwxPX2H5 pic.twitter.com/WZFwtSfAgT
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 22, 2025
From Luana, who says the AAUP grows “ever more pathetic.” Remember that their site recently had an article arguing against viewpoint diversity. Here they equate conservatives with fascists:
From Malcolm: Man helps fawn in distress, and fawn becomes his pal.
This man helped the fawn in distress and was surprised right after
that. pic.twitter.com/XKSkGUFlyw— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) September 16, 2025
Two from my feed. First, an encounter of the otter kind:
Cutest sea otter encounter at the zoo pic.twitter.com/RHwdE1KGvR
— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) October 21, 2025
Another deer rescue. I can’t believe these things really happened!
He Wanted Me to Follow… I Never Expected What I Found 🦌💚 pic.twitter.com/gYtm4ICNgD
— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) October 22, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish woman was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was 46.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-10-23T10:07:35.263Z
Two from Dr. Cobb, who’s coming back to where he belongs in Manchester. First, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office wants his picture up:
Hang it in the Louvre; I hear there's room…(Photo @aaronscott_dp)
— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T08:02:12.851Z
I think this is one of the “No kings” demonstrations:
#nokings Portland frog brigade
— Frettie Fingers (@frettie.bsky.social) 2025-10-18T20:40:34.460Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand. -Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (23 Oct 1899-1989)
Just so long as we know when to let go 🙂
Who would have thought that trump would try to wreck the White House as well as the country?… Everyone should have! Why not? This is a guy who has said he can shoot someone on a Manhattan street with no consequences (and judging by attempts to hold him accountable for almost anything indicates to me that he is probably right). The idea of historic preservation does not compute for him…the East Wing was simply an impediment to his latest shiny bauble. So it had to go.
Historic preservation folks wrote a letter…maybe Sen Shumer will write his own strongly worded letter as the excavators roll on.
The Orange Toddler has no class and has turned the office of the presidency from one due respect and suffused with gravitas to one seen forever now as the home of a dangerous clown.
However, as much as I despise the Orange Turd and all that he has ruined, Harry Truman completely gutted the White House. The only thing he didn’t destroy was the facade. The East Wing, so ignominously demolished yesterday, was added to the White House in 1902 and, if the newspapers are to believed, everyone hated it then too.
I work hard at avoiding Trump derangement syndrome* so the way I see it (besides the absolutely horrible taste in the design), it’s just same awfulness in our elected officials as there ever was.
*which seems less and less like pure, unthinking disgust at a colossal and dangerous fool and more and more like a clearer view of Trumpian dystopian future. I’m so confused.
I am all for celebrating mole day. I remember a few years ago at a family gathering, I made a joke that made everyone groan. My younger sister always has several cats and coos over them in a dopey way. She had been bragging that one of her cats is a good hunter and had recently killed a mole. I replied, “I’m not impressed. A mole isn’t very big. It is only 6.02 x 10^23 molecules.”
Nice one Michael! That is the kind of groaner that my high school physics students in the 70’s would have rolled their eyes at, but, more importantly, remembered. I had not seen mole day before this morning but like it very much. Things like this and pi day have a positive impact on kids’ science learnings. Keep ‘em coming.
Magnus Carlsen’s statement is hypocritical. After all, in 2022, he accused chess grandmaster Hans Moke Niemann of cheating without providing any evidence. Niemann was then subjected to a massive shitstorm.
I think Niemann had confessed to cheating in an online event, but swears he never cheated in an actual tournament game. With all the technological advances, it is hard to prevent a determined player from cheating. Perhaps the solution is to require the players to undergo a full body scan and then play naked in a Faraday cage.
Regardless, Danya’s death is saddening for many who, like me, knew him only through his commentating. His vibrancy and youth only compound the tragedy.
Your point about Carlsen’s own history re: accusations of cheating is fair, as his record in this regard is spotty, to say the least. However, in a 6-minute video lamenting Naroditsky’s death, Carlsen admitted that he is not the most trustworthy person in this regard. He is not being hypocritical in the claiming that “my skirts are clean” sense.
While it’s easy to cheat online without proper monitoring, it’s not quite as easy OTB (over the board). But it’s still possible, and there are recent cases of players being caught and banned.
I never met Danya, but his essential goodness shone through in his commentaries. As WGM Jennifer Shahade pointed out, not only does no one say anything bad about him, but no one remains neutral, either. You can see how much he was loved by the emotional reactions of the commentators. This is indeed a devastating loss to the chess world at large.
In conclusion, everyone praises Danya save for Vladimir Kramnik. I’m not opining whether Kramnik is responsible in some way for Naroditsky’s death, but I will say that for every supportive online comment for Kramnik there are 99 vituperative ones. It is interesting that Niemann (currently playing in the U.S. Championship) endured possibly even more pressure than Naroditsky did regarding the cheating allegations, but his chess has prospered since then and he seems to be doing fine. People handle such things differently, what can I say?
Let’s remember that the characterization of these bills as “anti-science” comes from an org that accepts the Hamas casualty numbers and pushes the “genocide” line.
As for the hand-wringing over the White House, people should read the Wikipedia article on the history of the White House to get an idea of the changes wrought over time by different Presidents and First Ladies. The East and West Wings aren’t original to the house and were built in the 20th century. Come on, it’s not like it’s the Obama Presidential Center.
I agree with you regarding the White House changes. Almost every administration does something to change the building, gardens, etc. I’m more offended by the huge and gaudy scale of the proposed ballroom. Who on earth wants to attend a party of 1,000 people?? (On a separate note, my office at US Treasury used to overlook the East Wing. Early on in my tenure, there was some event going on outside with Obama, and I opened my huge window to get a closer peek, when all of a sudden a Secret Service guy on the roof of the East Wing was pointing a rifle at me! I got the message and closed the window.)
“Who on earth wants to attend a party of 1,000 people??”
1,000 people.
Plus the wannabes.
A) What org? The AP? That’s all I see in jac’s writeup. And so what – whatever the view on Hamas is unrelated to Junior Kennedy et ux.
B) A POTUS is supposed to be aligned with the populace. Pulling a fait accompli is something that people do when they know the act will be unpopular and race to achieve an end that can’t be reversed. It was done in secrecy and with lies. No surprise with this cabal.
The AP made an argument for why it deems those bills anti-science. You only present the organization equivalent of an ad hominem. How about making a counter argument instead?
How long is the White House ballroom project supposed to take? Will it be done by 2028? If not, the only way Trump can use it is by staying in office.
And probably the first thing a democratic president in 2029 will do is demolish the thing.
That would appear too petty. Maybe they’ll ask for public suggestions for repurposing it, and publish a list of the more politically-convenient ones.
Mamdani’s popularity mystifies me. Not only is he pro-terrorist, his ideas are strange. Government-run grocery stores? GROCERY STORES?
Does he have “charisma” (Trump is also reputed to have it)? I’m not seeing it in either one but maybe it’s a matter of taste.
Charisma is a strange thing. I never really believed in it until my father had an unplanned personal encounter with Bill Clinton while he and Clinton were both playing golf on the same course. (This was when Clinton was in office).
For background: my father was a lifelong republican who vocally detested President Clinton. But when he came home after that encounter and described it to us, he couldn’t stop gushing about what a wonderful guy Bill Clinton was. It was like he had fallen into instant bro-love with Clinton. I still remember exchanging looks of disbelief with my sister.
To this day, it remains one of the most surprising things I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for anecdote! Yes, Clinton was also said to be charismatic.
On what was your father’s impression of Clinton based? I ask because it is sometimes the case that, within some groups, outside people are presented in a negative way. In some insular religious cultures, those who belong to another religion, or even another sect, are thought to be terrible people. I can see this kind of sometimes inadvertent brainwashing happening in political groups as well. One can live for quite a while without meeting someone from the other side.
My father’s beliefs about Clinton were simply based on the mainstream news (nothing like the rightwing echo chamber existed at the time). While he was conservative, he wasn’t rabid in the least. He would be horrified by Maga and Trump.
Today October 23 is International Day of the Snow Leopard as designated by the General Assembly of the UN. Various countries that have snow leopards work together in their efforts to preserve these wonderful cats.
And I thought snow leopards were mostly solitary. 🙂
As part of National Mole Day, we should remember Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and Kim Philby. Bill Haydon too.
The anti-science bills make me angry. My paternal grandfather, a medical doctor in rural upstate New York, spent decades taking care of children and young adults stricken—sometimes paralyzed—with polio. My mother has a picture of him giving me a shot as a baby. My grandfather has a beaming smile. My face is twisted and red. He was beaming while I cried because he had just protected his grandson from the scourge of polio. He knew the value of vaccines. He lived the value of vaccines.
And on to the White House. It has been renovated numerous times over the decades. It will survive this renovation, and the new ballroom might even be both functional and beautiful. I’m withholding judgment until I see the results.
Mamdani? He’s a skilled politician, but there is no longer even a crack of light between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Before the Holocaust, Reform Judaism was itself anti-Zionist, meaning that it opposed the effort to establish a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. The Reform leadership believed that a State of Israel would lead to charges of “dual loyalty” and that Jews in the enlightened 20th century were now safe to pledge allegiance to their home countries. That all changed with the Holocaust. Reform Judaism quietly abandoned its opposition to Zionism and came to understand—as all Jews do—that Israel is the only place in the world where Jews are welcome without condition. Opposition to Zionism is opposition to Judaism itself.
I’m not saying that this is common, but if someone opposes all ethnic and religious states, that makes this person an Anti-Zionist. Does it make this person an antisemite?
In Germany it is not uncommon to oppose both religious states and states based in ethnicity.
Once again, I don’t think most anti-zionists hold such a blanket position but rather target Israel in particular. I would just caution to equate one with the other.
I think the Holocaust changed everything. (Yes I’m aware that some Jews are anti-Zionists.)
The other difference is that states once created have a right to exist. States are dismantled only through external conquest and internal rebellion, both of which the state’s government has the sovereign right to suppress with as much brutality as necessary. They don’t get “legislated” out of existence. Even if we might not be willing in principle to carve a state for the Kurds or the French Quebeckers or the Navaho out of the lands the existing states control today, and not even create a state just for them on some terra nullius that rose up from the ocean in the future, the world is rather stuck with religious or ethnostates that exist now.
Such as Germany, say.
Germany is not an ethno state. There is no difference made between German citizens of different ethnic origin. Only the far-right fringe differentiates between ethnic Germans and the rest (and do it poorly) and they are judged harshly by the majority of the population for it.
Being anti-Zionist doesn’t mean you have to favor the destruction of Israel either (though most do and it’s reprehensible in my view). Israel being a secular state based on shared secular values would be enough.
In theory, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have different meanings. That is, in theory, that one can oppose the existence of the State of Israel as the instantiation of the Jewish movement for self determination while at the same time not oppose Judaism. But in today’s climate among those who are actively engaged in the anti-Zionism movement, anti-Zionism as distinct from antisemitism is as rare as hen’s teeth. One can confidently put an equal sign between the two and almost never be wrong.
My main issue with the equal sign is that antisemitism is a strong charge – as it should be. If someone is saying they are against religious states and ethno states (which I think is a reasonable position to hold) means that you are labeling them an antisemite since they are anti-zionist.
So either you make antisemitism go the way of racism which has lost a lot of its impact or you actually think that those who bear no ill will against Jews are antisemites.
Has the shutdown already ended and I have missed the news or is it still ongoing and no one talks about it?
It is hard to tell from across the Atlantic.
Still going on, unfortunately.
The millions of people whose lives were “saved” by Covid vaccine in 2021 are mostly dead and forgotten now. That’s because the life expectancy for Americans admitted to a nursing home is six months. For the frail over-75s dependent on others for instrumental activities of daily living because of constrained mobility it is only about two years….even absent Covid.
Even though those “saved” by vaccination are no longer able to express their undying gratitude, being now dead, the people who got fired for refusing vaccination, who lost their businesses to lockdowns, and whose children’s education suffered while teachers unions pretended to teach from home for two years, are still very much alive. They’ll be resentful and mistrustful and their children socially damaged for the rest of their days. Having been young during the pandemic (unlike those “saved”), they have a lot of days left.
Nostalgic reminiscences about polio and iron lungs aren’t relevant to why vaccine resistance is rising….unless you can show that more parents are refusing polio vaccine itself. My other advice is to leave the anti-vaxxers alone. They don’t care what we think of them. They aren’t a threat to our health if they don’t vaccinate their children, as long as we are vaccinated ourselves. Parents of an immune-deficient child who can’t take (live) measles vaccine already know how little other people are willing to be compelled or cajoled to protect him, and will need to be vigilant as always.
COVID listed as 8th most common cause of death in children.
You might have quoted the complete headline, which ended with, “despite relatively low mortality rate”
The point was that it kills kids, too. I could add that my two dead neighbors, while old, were not infirm, either.
It was 8th in 2021. It’s no longer even in the top 10.
These anti-science measures and the decrease in vaccination rates did not gain traction because of Kennedy. Rather, both Kennedy and these measures gained traction because heavy-handed and arrogant advocates of “the Science” cratered confidence in public health during the pandemic. The reasons are many: panicked response, fearmongering, blatant politicization (churches and sporting events bad; George Floyd rallies good), coerced vaccinations for low-risk groups, a parade of incorrect information and bad policy hailed as gospel, prolonged and unnecessary school closures, and, perhaps most importantly, widespread refusal among overweening officials and their supporters to admit error either then or now. It should surprise precisely no one that an independent national commission was never convened to review lessons learned as preparation for a future pandemic.
The sad part about all of it is that cooler heads at the time predicted this eventual outcome. They, like Jay Bhattacharya, were mostly cast out of their tribe as reward for their troubles.
Like begets like—both in substance and in tone. Of course, I expect neither the public health establishment nor our universities to learn this lesson. In that regard, they have much in common with politicians of both parties.
I tried to follow the links in that AP story, which refer to other AP stories. I was trying to find the meat of the matter, the 30 or so anti-science bills that have actually been passed in twelve states. Which states? What do those bills specifically say? Did the governors sign them into law? No luck. Lots of stories about the MAHA movement, which, fair comment, seems to be based on the idea that something is really seriously wrong out there when it’s not, other than that people including children are way too fat over-all, and are gripped by a weird mass neurosis. But no enumeration of the anti-science laws which would impair the public health.
This is important because in American state legislatures, any assemblyman can introduce a looney-tune bill just to score political points with the folks in his county, knowing that it will never pass. In Parliaments, only bills introduced by the Government, which by definition reflect considered Government policy, have any chance of becoming law because the Government (Cabinet) controls the legislature. If a “Government bill” were to be defeated, it could trigger a non-confidence motion which would bring down the Government and force an immediate election if the motion passed.
The Government, which controls the agenda of the House, occasionally allows whackadoodle private-member bills to be debated but almost never permits its MPs to vote in favour and usually kills them in committee. This is what would happen to an anti-vax bill here, saving us the mirth-inducing embarrassment American legislators fall prey to, being under no such constraints. So we need to see the laws that gathered enough support by other legislators (and the governors) in those 30 states to pass into law before we can judge the temperature of the anti-science climate. Strange that this information was omitted from the AP story.
The AP seems to misquote itself. The business about blood banks was one of the many criteria its investigation used to determine if a bill was “anti-science.” The criterion was, Did a bill propose to bar blood banks (and other health facilities) from requiring their staff to be vaccinated? Not, as the main story says, to require blood banks to test donors for evidence of vaccination.* And the story doesn’t tell us if any anti-science bills actually met that criterion, only that it was used in the screen.
(* Fwiw, the Canadian Blood Service asks donors at each donation if they have received a vaccination in the past three months. I don’t know what they do with the answer, as I haven’t been deferred after influenza, Covid, or Shingrix, but there you are.)
Leslie this is a very common trick you note:
“in American state legislatures, any assemblyman can introduce a looney-tune bill just to score political points with the folks in his county, knowing that it will never pass. ”
-I’m surprised more people aren’t aware of it. Esp. when introduced by lawyers who KNOW it’ll never pass or if it does it’ll be struck down immediately.
D.A.
NYC
The two deer videos were delightful. Reminds me seeing the video of Elsa of bringing her two cubs into Joy Adamson’s camp.
“I still think that nearly everyone who calls themselves an ‘anti-Zionist’ is at bottom an anti-Semite.” Hmm. Wonder if that judgment applies to some of those avowed anti-Zionists listed in a UK Guardian report published yesterday? See “Jewish figures across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel,” at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/22/jewish-notables-open-letter-un-sanction-israel
The otter video and at least one of the deer videos are AI. I hope the good professor will start being a little more cynical about videos that are too good to be true.
I do my best, including looking for “community notes”. I am not perfect. And I hope you realize how patronizing this comment is; I am not heartened by the “good professor” crap. Please don’t tell me that I need to change my behavior.