Welcome to a Hump Day (“Pukkeldag” in Danish): December 10, 2025. It’s winter in Chicago, the streets clotted with ice and slush that has turned a dirty gray. Welcome, winter! It’s National Lager Day, and here’s a good one to drink now, from the excellent website A Potable Pastime (note the plastic goat around the neck). A quote from the article:
Appears very dark, near black until held up to the light, then a deep, glowing burgundy displays. Perfect clarity; amazing color! The tan head starts out big and settles to an 1/8″ thick or so and leaves behind some partial foam rings during the session.
Aroma is deepest, darkest caramelized malt, rich, sweet, with baked pit fruit notes and molasses.
Full bodied and smooth, with very finely beaded carbonation tickling the tongue briefly. There’s some viscosity as it rides over my tongue.
Loaded with the dark malty flavors the aromas promised. Gently sweet, with layered and complex malt character. It dries a bit leading into dark caramel and toffee, suggestions of dryish baked dark plums and raisins, molasses, and teasing of German-roast coffee that expands towards the finish. This is about as dark tasting as I think one can get without going into overtly roasty or cocoa-heavy flavors.
It’s also Dewey Decimal System Day (born on this day in 1851), Nobel Prize Day (already? stay tuned), and Human Rights Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I haven’t written about the corruption scandal involving Somalis in Minnesota, but the details, given in this NYT article from Nov. 30, are pretty clear (article archived here). And there’s a new article in the Free Press called “Minnesota Vice: How corruption took hold of my state.” (Ironically, it’s by Dave Kansas.) First from the NYT:
The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.
Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.
Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating. That is more than Minnesota spends annually to run its Department of Corrections. Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.
Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans, and fraud has turned into a potent political issue in a competitive campaign season. Gov. Tim Walz and fellow Democrats are being asked to explain how so much money was stolen on their watch, providing Republicans, who hope to take back the governor’s office in 2026, with a powerful line of attack.
From the FP:
Things have changed in the past few years. If I had a save/get key on my computer that wrote “so strange for this to happen in Minnesota,” it would be worn out by now. George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police. We had Somali immigrants go to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar joined the Squad. Democratic socialists were chic here long before Zohran Mamdani. “Murderapolis,” the nickname Minneapolis received during a murder surge in the 1990s, made a comeback. A Minnesota state representative and her husband were shot dead in the middle of the night in their home by a man posing as a police officer. A shooter fired through the windows of Annunciation Catholic School during a Mass to celebrate the start of the school year, killing two children and injuring dozens.
I have probably overlooked some examples. It has been like that. A state proud of its high-trust, quiet, chilly ways has been a dark, Lynchian movie for half a decade now.
Our state’s famously passive-aggressive ways might explain why it took a hard-edged, Eastern-bred U.S. attorney to uncover the Feeding Our Future mess. Andrew Luger, appointed to his second stint as U.S. Attorney for Minnesota in 2022, grew up in Cresskill, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Yonkers, New York. He played football at Amherst as an offensive lineman and earned his law degree at Georgetown. Minnesota was not in his frame of reference. “I’d never been west of Philadelphia,” he told me.
Well, there are two factors at play here. First is the Somali community’s cohesion and slow assimilation, so that any cultural tendencies towards corruption (and there are such data from Somalia) spread through the group. (People do not like to hear about the fact that the miscreants were almost all Somali, though it hardly needs pointing out that the majority of Somalis did not participate.) The second is the reluctance of the authorities, a mixture of Somalis and non-Somalis, to dig deeper into this. As for the state’s “famously passive-aggressive ways,” well, the article doesn’t explain why Minnesota is an outlier in that respect. Could it be institutional naiveté? If so, why Minnesota?
*I’ve always been opposed to vaccine exemptions, which give a school kid a pass from vaccination on religious grounds—but sometimes on philosophical grounds. In the last chapter of Faith Versus Fact (a book that would make a nice Koynezaa present to a friend), I point out that nearly all states in the U.S.allow religious exemptions from vaccination. Others allow philosophical or personal exemptions from vaccination. Neither of these are justified since the cost of catering to religious or philosophical dictates (epidemics) is greater than of adhering to those dictates vis-à-vis vaccination. (In contrast, medical excemptions for vaccination, allowed in all states, are justifiable.) But at least five states—California, Maine, New York, Connecticut and West Virginia—bar all non-medical school exemptions from vaccination. Here’s a map from the National Conference for State Legislatures:
Now the Supreme Court may take action to further loosen those requirements in New York state (article archived here):
The U.S. Supreme Court signaled on Monday that it may favor loosening New York’s strict school vaccine requirements, which do not allow for religious exemptions.
The court vacated a federal appeals court ruling upholding the vaccine requirements and ordered the lower court to reopen the case “for further consideration.”
For years, New York had allowed exemptions to school immunization requirements for students who held religious objections to vaccines or were unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons. But after a large measles outbreak that was concentrated in Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Rockland County, New York State eliminated the religious exemptions in 2019.
In the years since, childhood vaccination rates against measles climbed in New York. But the change to the law was challenged by a lawsuit filed in Rochester by a number of Amish people and Amish schools on the grounds that it interfered with their right to practice their faith and impart their religious values to their children. At least two federal courts in New York rejected their arguments.
New York is one of only five states not to offer an exemption from school vaccine requirements for religious or personal reasons, and, in one of those states, West Virginia, the governor has sought to introduce them.In its March ruling, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in Manhattan, noted that in the years before the 2019 change a growing number of parents were receiving religious exemptions from vaccines for their children, undermining disease control efforts.
At private and parochial schools, the percentage of students invoking religious exemptions had jumped from .54 percent to 1.53 percent, according to the court record. In Rockland County, an epicenter of the 2019 measles outbreak and home to a large ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, up to 20 percent of students had religious exemptions at some schools.
The religious exemptions “resulted in clusters of low vaccination rates and an inability to achieve herd immunity in certain communities,” the ruling said.
Epidemiologists estimate that at least 95 percent of a community needs to be vaccinated to protect a community from a measles outbreak.
And “reconsidering the case” has a historical precedent favoring religious accommodation—but towards storybooks:
The Supreme Court order directed the Second Circuit to reconsider the case in light of a recent ruling on religious freedom involving a very different topic. The ruling that the Supreme Court cited, Mahmoud v. Taylor, decided in June, involved storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes and whether parents with religious objections could have their children excused from classes where the books were discussed.
First Liberty has argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the storybooks case shows that the Second Circuit was too dismissive of the Amish parents’ claim about how the school vaccine requirements threatened their religious beliefs.
I was naive to think that the Supreme court would curb the excesses of Trump—and I count vaccination opposition as one of these. And I was equally naive to think that this Court would follow precedent: the principle of stare decisis. But I never said I was a political pundit!
*Speaking of vaccinations, pediatrician and infectious disease expert Paul Offit explains why the new vaccine recommendation about Hepatitis-B for newborns is misguided. (The subtitle is “A recent recommendation by RFK Jr.’s vaccine advisory committee shows why trusting experts is still a good idea”; h/t Bat. The “experts” are not the members of RFK, Jr.’s handpicked anti-vax committee, of course.
On June 9, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the 17 experts that served on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Two days later, he replaced them with people who, like him, had been anti-vaccine and anti-science. A few weeks later, on July 1, 2025, RFK Jr. told Tucker Carlson that “we need to stop trusting experts.” In his revamped ACIP, RFK Jr. has gotten his wish. Unfortunately, because these non-experts are now making policy decisions, we are forced to trust them. Even though their lack of expertise has put our children at unnecessary risk.
On December 5, 2025, RFK Jr.’s ACIP reconsidered the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose. They reaffirmed the birth dose recommendation for all infants whose mothers were found to have been infected with hepatitis B virus during a first trimester screening test and for infants whose mother’s testing status was unknown. Maintaining the previous birth dose recommendation in these situations was easy. About 90 percent of infants infected with hepatitis B virus at birth will develop cirrhosis or liver cancer.
Then they crossed a line, arguing that babies born to mothers who were not infected with hepatitis B virus didn’t need a vaccine. Parents could decide whether to get the vaccine or not, but in either case should wait until at least two months of age. To understand why this was a dangerously uninformed decision, we need to go back to the beginning.
Here are the facts, with the bad stuff from the Administration’s committee turning on the second paragraph below (my bolding):
The hepatitis B vaccine was first licensed in 1981. One year later, in 1982, the CDC recommended a birth dose before leaving the hospital for all babies born to mothers infected with hepatitis B virus during first-trimester screening. The birth dose recommendation in 1982 didn’t make much of a dent on the incidence of hepatitis B infection. In response, in 1988, the CDC expanded the birth dose to include racial and ethnic groups at highest risk of hepatitis B virus infection (such as Alaskan Natives and Southeast Asian refugees). Again, not much impact. The RFK Jr.-led ACIP now wants us to go back to a program that between 1982 and 1991 failed to dramatically lower the incidence of hepatitis B infections in young children.
In 1991, the CDC further expanded its birth dose to all U.S. newborns. At the time, about 30,000 children less than 10 years of age were infected with hepatitis B virus. About half of those children were infected from their mother, but the other half weren’t. These other 15,000 children less than 10 years old weren’t sex workers and they weren’t intravenous drug users. Rather, they got infected from relatively casual contact with one of the millions of people in the United States who were chronically infected with hepatitis B virus. The source of infection could be shared towels, washcloths, nail clippers, toothbrushes or even partially eaten food or candies. More than half of those with chronic hepatitis B infection with whom the children had come in contact didn’t know they were infected. Worse, children who are infected with hepatitis B virus between 1 and 5 years of age have a 25 percent chance of suffering chronic liver damage or liver cancer later in life. The change to a universal birth dose decreased the incidence of hepatitis B infections in children by more than 99 percent, a remarkable achievement.
And Offit’s summary:
To their credit, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) immediately stood up for America’s children. “This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children,” said AAP President Dr. Susan Kressly: “I want to reassure parents and clinicians that there is no new or concerning information about the hepatitis B vaccine that is prompting this change, nor has children’s risk of contracting hepatitis B changed. Instead, this is the result of a deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families.”
The ACIP’s laxity on when a child should be vaccinated will undoubtedly lead to a higher proportion of infected children, for some parents will just ditch the vaccination. And reread the first bold sentence above about the connection between childhood infection and liver disease.
*A report in the Washington Post tells tells us about a “New study shows how your brain changes at four key ages: 9, 32, 66, and 83.” OY! Here’s a précis of the five stages involving the four transitions; the work was done at the University of Cambridge, and the article is archived here.
In the new study, [Alexa] Mousley and colleagues looked at around 4,000 scans from healthy people ages 0 to 90 and analyzed their brains. They found four major times when the brain underwent developmental changes, around ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, dividing the lifespan into five distinct phases.
Childhood: From infancy to nine years old, the brain is busy. There is a lot of consolidation of neural connections happening, competitive elimination of synapses and rapid increases in gray and white matter. But interestingly the brain is becoming less efficient during this time — so it takes longer for information to get from one region of the brain to another. The researchers don’t fully understand why this would be the pattern, but they have some theories.
“We know that in very early life, the brain makes more connections than it needs, and then it prunes them away,” Mousley said. “It’s unclear if that is kind of what’s happening here, but it is potentially what’s happening.”
Adolescence:
There is a dramatic turning point that the researchers saw occurring around the age of nine on average — a time when many children begin to enter puberty. The brain switches gears and starts rewiring to become more efficient.
The adolescence phase the researchers identified lasts for two decades, into the early 30s on average. This is when people are most vulnerable to developing a mental health disorder, but it’s also a critical time for braindevelopment. . . . this research adds to a growing body of work suggesting that the brain isn’t fully developed or stable until our late 20s or even early 30s.
Adulthood:
Adulthood is the longest phase — lasting for more than three decades from around 32 years old until around 66 years old.
“It does seem to be this kind of period of relative stability,” Mousley said. “It’s consistent for a very long period of time.”
That doesn’t mean that the brain isn’t changing during this period, but the changes are less dramatic than during other phases. This is also a period of stability in terms of intelligence, behavior and personality.
Early aging:
Around 66 years old on average, the researchers saw another turning point. This is a time when the brain seems to become more vulnerable to age-related diseases — but the news isn’t all bad for the aging brain.
“There’s an expected and healthy, typical way for the brain to shift,” Mousley said.
Insel noted that in addition to some of the negative changes people might associate with aging, like memory loss, there are also positive changes. Older adults tend to be wiser and better at emotional regulation.
Late aging:
From 83 onward, the researchers identified a “late aging” phase.
“What we’re seeing during that late aging phase is something called ‘increasing centrality,’” Mousley said. Particular regions of the brain become more important than others during this time. There is reduced connectivity, but there seems to be a pattern to that change.
The metaphor Mousley used was that of changing bus routes. If you had a direct bus to work, but one day it stopped running and you had to take two buses, the transfer station would suddenly become very important. She theorized that the brain might be prioritizing important connections if other connections drop off.
I could add “Death: brain stops functioning,” but that would be morbid. The article concludes by saying that the next steps are to figure out how these measures of brain structure relate to cognition, but also to figure out how they’re affected by things like exercise, diet, and “social connection.” I’m just glad I’m still in the penultimate stage.
*This is the most-clicked article in yesterday’s NYT: “Katy Perry posts photos with Justin Trudeau amid romance rumors.” Such is the NYT, which is increasingly focusing on popular culture and lifestyle stuff (e.g., “Wirecutter”):
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau have not publicly commented on the monthslong rumors of their romance, but Ms. Perry, a pop star, and Mr. Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada, have reached a celebrity couple milestone.
On Saturday, Ms. Perry posted photos and videos on Instagram of herself and Mr. Trudeau posing cheek to cheek and exploring Japan, making them “Instagram official.”
The carousel of images Ms. Perry posted included a short video of her sitting with Mr. Trudeau while she tasted uni, or sea urchin, as well as Trudeau-less shots of sumo wrestling and fluffy pancakes.
Ms. Perry was in Japan as part of her Lifetimes Tour to promote her 2024 album, “143.” She performed in Tokyo on Wednesday after appearances in other Asian countries, as well as in South America, the United States and Europe.
Her “Instagram official” declaration was slightly undermined in a way possible only for those in the unconventional pairing of A-list celebrity and former prime minister.
The former prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, last week shared a photo on social media of him, his wife, Yuko Kishida, Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Perry.
The translation of his caption described Ms. Perry as Mr. Trudeau’s “partner.”
The iconic instagram Post. Click on it to go to the original, which has several pictures and videos of the pair. I didn’t even know that Justin Trudeau was divorced until I read the article.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a competition between Hili and Szaron is impending:
Szaron: He put the laptop down and took a book.
Hili: I’m just about to climb onto his lap.
Szaron: So am I.
In Polish:
Szaron: On odłożył laptop i sięgnął po książkę.
Hili: Zaraz mu wskoczę na kolana.
Szaron: Ja też.
*******************
From Give Me a Sign: don’t fear the Reaper.
From The Language Nerds:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
I may have posted this before, but if you missed it, here’s Masih presenting a number of Iranian women singing or protesting the regime’s ban on singing:
I launched new initiative calling on male singers in Iran to finally take a stand: “Without Women, Never.” Refuse to perform on stage that bans women from singing. Listen to female singers from inside Iran demanding this act of solidarity.#بدون_زنان_هرگزpic.twitter.com/AYU7Abm2CS
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 4, 2025
From Luana. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution, so I haven’t recommended that it be eliminated. To do that, you’d probably need a Constitutional amendment (or the Supreme Court, which seems to be making its own constitution):
CITIZENSHIP: The UK ended birthright citizenship in 1983. Australia did so in 1986. India did in 1987. Ireland followed in 2005. New Zealand followed in 2006. Many European democracies have long required a parental tie. Canada and the United States have stood almost alone among… pic.twitter.com/JALwmSEGq6
— @amuse (@amuse) December 8, 2025
From Larry the Cat, a photobomb:
Feline diplomacy. https://t.co/r7En54kcec
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) December 8, 2025
From Malcolm, a nice cat game:
Their favorite game…🤣 pic.twitter.com/EmVUlFZA0u
— The Internet of Cats 🐈🐈⬛ (@KittiesInternet) November 21, 2025
One from my feed (I reposted it). This is a fantastic ad:
A fantastic ad for a French supermarket, featuring a vegetarian wolf. https://t.co/Nsbfo8FTT7
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 9, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
The suitcases, carefully addressed because their owners expected to get them back, are the most poignant part of the museum—except for the piles of hair shaved from women’s heads, intended to stuff mattresses. https://t.co/WvfOyaeZtK
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 10, 2025
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, an article (free access) by Jennifer Ouellette on the Egyptian Pyramids:
Three Generations Built the Pyramids of Giza Over time, But How Is Debated http://www.discovermagazine.com/three-genera…
— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T13:24:02.295Z
. . . and Matthew traces a neologism:
I've done a lot of reading about ideas of heredity in the past, and "bloodline" never appears (I am still in the 16th century). Here's why: it's a eugenicky 20th century invention, boosted by Dan Brown. It's eugeno-bollocks.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T13:36:04.530Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant– / … The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind. -Emily Dickinson, poet (10 Dec 1830-1886)
I have known many Jewish people in my mid-size Southern community who self-identify as Orthodox, but whose behaviors and observances run the range from what I call “Orthodox in name only” (e.g. joined the shul because their parents went there), but religious observances shade more toward Conservative at most, all the way to some pretty eclectic and strict families…though I know nothing of the Hasids in NY. I do not recall anything from my Conservative upbringing that would have me giving even a second thought regarding the importance of vaccinations…maybe even considering receiving them a duty to my community.
So, can someone please tell me what it is in the Jewish faith dicta, that drives some orthodox communities to reject vaccination??
D.A.? Norman? Any ideas?
I have no idea where the opposition to vaccination came from. But the Hasidim (of New York and elsewhere) are not typical. They are not remnants of the “original Jews” as so many think. The movement came to be in the 18th century and has its own beliefs and traditions. One of the hallmarks is their insistence that life should be joyful.*
*Which makes them clearly an outlier to the rest of Judaism. (Just kidding.)
Interesting. Thanks Norman. Oy, now we should be joyful too?!
Yes, Jim. We should be joyful! For the most part, I am. That’s because I don’t set expectations too high. 🙂
Seems more like Buddhism. 🙂
YES! Just going to write about this actually.
NY is a unique state vax wise, bc the religious exemption is big here. I’m with PCC(E) on this issue.
Also… what many think of as Orthodox in other places (Melbourne, say, Manhattan.. and I guess VA)… is quite different to our local communities of “hats” (b/c they wear hats! – its not terribly pejorative) in Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Boro Park when PCC(E) visited the Rabbi Shneerson’s/Mosaich’s abode of Lubavitch Power) ….. and a town upstate called Monsey.
I worked w/ a bunch of them on Wall St. – they even had their own bus lines go get home. Lovely guys, a little rude to secular Jews at times, but nobody is getting beheaded which is always nice!
Their communities – I presume like Somali MNs – are suspicious of vaccines, evolution (!), and anything invented since a few hundred years ago in Ukraine.
Similar cases in Mea Shearim in Israel.
And then there’s the Amish – of which I know nothing.
In the sharp end of religion a lot of rationality and science is lost.
best Jim,
D.A.
NYC
Thanks David. “…in the sharp end….” I think that may be pretty much it!
Somalians in the UK:
72% of adults live in taxpayer-subsidised housing (UK average 16.6%)
70% of working-age adults are unemployed and living on benefits (UK average 5%)
Only 1-in-10 is a net contributor (paying more in taxes than cost to taxpayer)
Each Somali illegal immigrant costs the UK taxpayer an average of £1M over their lifetime.
Their strict version of Islam discourages Somali women from working and being economic contributors, or doing jobs one might want migrants for (nursing, care assistant, etc).
Statistics are pretty much the same elsewhere in Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, etc). Data on 2nd- and 3rd-generation migration is, as yet, sparse, but suggests that such patterns persist to succeeding generations; they are also a substantial net cost to the taxpayer.
And yet the politicians tell us that diversity is our “greatest strength” and that we need migrants to “boost the economy” and “pay our pensions”.
I don’t get the Google is Wrong sign??
I assume that Google showed the path behind the gate as a nice public path to take a walk on, but the land owners were of a different opinion.
I guess that makes sense…thanks.
Google always directs people to the alley behind our house instead of to the front of the house.
Quite some time ago, Garmin suggested that I drive on a dirt track through a cornfield. I did not.
I remember this Apple Maps incident from 2013: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24246646
I think it is about the mapping apps that can lead travelers to specific locations but sometimes get it wrong. Recently my wife and I were directed down a farmer’s field road when trying to find the entrance to a State Park. We had to perform a difficult turn-around to get back on the paved road and the farmer must have wondered what the heck we were doing.
I was really really impressed a couple of years ago when Apple Maps led us successfullyto the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, along several forest services roads. On the other hand, it once sent us in circles in Toronto, which I actually know pretty well but was thinking they had a more efficient way circles not being one of them.
Every year in Colorado, Google sends folks on impassable mountain roads, often leading to people being stranded and some dieing.
Ever heard of “The Way” by a band named Fastball. Their song had nothing to do with Google Maps or any other internet stuff, but your comment reminds me of that song (It was written about a true story. Sad story, but good song).
I had not, but I’ll look it up. Thanks.
In past years Google Maps has sent people down closed roads in the area where we live or sent them down nearly impassable routes as “the shortest way”. I don’t know if the travel directions in that area have improved recently. But I appreciate the sign that was reposted here today.
That French ad is adorable. And I’ve never seen cartoon food look so delicious! But I did notice the wolf caught fish. How come fish are so often left out of our concern for animals? I don’t have a right to moralize, because the only reason I don’t eat fish is because I don’t like the taste, but it is curious.
The recommendation to delay hep b vaccination for 2 months is outrageous since there isn’t a shred of evidence that vaccination at birth causes any harm. But of course, it strongly implies that there is something harmful about the hep b vaccine, since parents will logically reason, “why would they have recommended delaying for 2 months if it wasn’t harmful?” And once you raise the false idea that it is harmful to vaccinate for hep b at any time, you will have some parents reacting as if the false idea is true by deciding not to vaccinate their kids for hep b at all.
Non-zero numbers of children will get die prematurely of liver cancer as a direct result of RFK jr.
Love the French veggie wolf!!
Oh lots of deaths Brooke – on top of the 80 Samoan kids which died of measles after his trip there to advise them about the …. (checks notes).. dangers of the vax!
“The most dangerous living American” – our grifter conman nepo baby RFK…
I’ll leave it there b/c I get salty in my language. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Maybe some fish-on-Friday folks have an answer.
Thanks for the Paul Offit article on the Hep b vaccine. I have seen people question it in many forums but this is the best summary of the reasons for it I have seen. In this case and so many others it turns out that the experts used good data to come to their decisions.
Anti-vaccine arguments remind me of creation “science”. You keep seeing the same arguments come up over and over. It is like “evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics”. People repeat it without understanding it.
Wow. Read some of the comments on Paul Offit’s article. It is full of anti-vax people.
Offit’s Substack is free to read and comment. It attracts a group of anti-vaxxers who spread their misinformation and argue incessantly.
He should really block them but perhaps feels that wouldn’t be good publicity either.
I see anti-vaxxers on many conservative sites, although I’m not suggesting all conservatives are like this (they’re not).
There’s loads of them at The Free Press, too.
At least since Covid 2020 and the anti-vaxxer piling on engendered by that event, pediatrician Paul Offitt has embraced opportunities to engage with the anti-science people in the media….which of course has drawn their unhinged wrath. For years he has fought the good fight against the anti-science crowd with his excellent medical trade books. He continues today with his regularly published and as Frau Katze notes, freely available “Beyond the Noise” substack and even goes the extra mile to spread the word in doing a video conversation of his substacks with Vincent Raniello on MicrobeTV…. and lends his subject matter expertise to direct the Vaccine Education Project at Childrens Hospital of Philiadelphia.
A never-tasted Double Bock. Available in local stock. The liquor store is calling . . . Thanks!
I asked both Grok and ChatGPT about childhood Hep B vaccination practices in Europe. If what AI claims below is true (standard AI caveat), then the US will now be in line with standard vaccination practice in Europe. We were formerly an outlier, as we were with COVID vaccination recommendations. Perhaps there is something unique about the US that requires a different approach, but I haven’t yet heard anyone make that case.
“The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) tracks national schedules, and for babies of HBsAg-negative mothers:
No routine birth dose: In 24 out of 26 low-prevalence European countries (including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark), the first Hep B dose is given at 2 months as part of a hexavalent combo vaccine (protecting against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Hib, and Hep B). A third dose follows at 11-12 months. The U.S. was already an outlier among developed nations for insisting on the birth dose universally.
Risk-based only: Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Iceland limit Hep B vaccination to high-risk infants (e.g., those born to infected mothers, who get the birth dose + immune globulin within 12-24 hours). Universal infant vaccination isn’t part of their core schedule at all—Denmark’s program covers just 10 diseases, excluding Hep B for low-risk kids.”
https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Scheduler/ByDisease?SelectedDiseaseId=6&SelectedCountryIdByDisease=-1
Well Doug, a policy that developed over a period of thirty five years* can be difficult to summarise in a WEIT post, on demand. There are a variety of reasons why ANY country might have a different public health policy than any other, leaving aside the silly idea that because others do it, we should too. Dr Offit’s website (cited above) is a good place to start. Mostly I think it has to do with the success of the program in the face of uncertain viral status and the generally bad outcome if a child is infected at birth.
Still, it’s a good question to ask; what would be the effect of changing the recommendations? Well, unsuprisingly to many, but probably will be surprising to anti-vaxxers, actual real scientists and MDs have been asking that very question. Despite the bleating of those know-nothings, they aren’t in cahoots with evil pharmaceutical companies and really do want to know the answers.
Anyway, one such conclusion (cited below) is that changing the Hep B recommendation would not have a large effect; the number of childen expected to contract HepB if the recommendations are altered, increases by one estimate to 1101 new infections per year (seriously, 1101. Not 1102, or 1099… 1101. I’m trying to find their math). With the current recommendations that number would be 625 new infections per year. That’s a 73% increase for sure, but it’s not a large number of soon-to-be sick/dead children.
So it’s a cost-benefit analysis. Do you change the recommendation and simply say “sorry” to the parents of those 476 children? That is what this comes down to if these claims are correct; how many children are we to sacrifice to satisify RFK and his minions? I think it is innumerable as it makes little sense to deny that their intention is to eliminate vaccines altogether.
Here is the paper I reference
JAMA
Published Online: December 3, 2025
doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.24996
*which has been spectacularly successful – since introduction of universal HebB shots the rate of infections in US children dropped by >99% until 2010 when the numbers of infected children started increasing again due to an influx of HepB infected immigrants.
FWIW, Canada considers our prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection to be low enough that routine vaccination of standard-risk infants can be left to individual provinces (who have to fund it, as with all health care including public health) to make their own decisions.
The thirteen provinces and territories vary in whether they do routine infant vaccination. Much depends on their own grokking of their local epidemiology and cost-effectiveness. Some provinces and territories do vaccinate all infants, especially the poorer ones that have higher prevalence of infected mothers and higher numbers of children and pregnant women who are difficult to reach (“marginalized”.) These poorer provinces have their health care budgets heavily subsidized by the richer ones, insulating them from the full costs of all their decisions.
Ontario, the most populous province, joins several others in immunizing all children in Grade 7 and immunizes only high-risk infants: those born to mothers with acute or chronic hepatitis B infection and those in demographics likely to have hepatitis B infection in their mothers and family contacts are included in a long list.
The Ontario approach is recognized to result in a few newborn and childhood infections that might be prevented. It’s not entirely clear to me what the benefit is of delaying vaccination to age 12 but these are the facts: Infant vaccination requires three doses, adolescent vaccination only two, saving a $70 dose and, given the time value of money (12 years @ 3%), delaying the two doses yields another $100 or so. Not all infants survive to adolescence, so every child who dies (or emigrates even to another province) saves Ontario another two doses. Can this be enough, though?
Another downside of infant vaccination, which even those arguing for it acknowledge, is the known risk that in the confusing welter of infant vaccinations, a multi-vax preparation that doesn’t contain Hep B will be given in error and the child will be unknowingly un- or under- vaccinated when it sets out into the HepB world. Two does of a single vax at age 12 is likely to be the right one.
I think we all recognize that the Canadian approach is explicitly to get the most bang for the tax buck from what is an expensive vaccine — although it’s much cheaper than it used to be — while accepting that perfection isn’t the goal in a publicly funded environment. Low-risk parents who want to vaccinate their infants can pay for it themselves if they wish, but the state has to provide the greatest benefit for the greatest number at an acceptable cost. American advisory bodies of course can’t be seen to be trying to save money for the insurance companies, so I get the difference in emphasis from public comments.
I’ve never encountered a person with hepatitis B in my life and didn’t know there was a vaccine until recently.
I gather the problem is worse in certain demographics. Would these be be people who inject illicit drugs?
I’ve known two people with it and they were both IV drug users.
Edit/add: They both died young and were obviously in liver failure. They very well may have had Hep C and or HIV as well thiugh this was before the US screened for Hep C (formerly known as non A/B) and before HIV had been identified.
The Somali thing is probably an outlier, but one should expect that any public program will be a target for fraud. If discoveries of fraud aren’t a regular news item, you can assume that the relevant government is either incompetent or corrupt.
Well Dr.B it seems the overall dynamics of Somali immigration results in higher levels of some troubles.
Interestingly, it is only recently that being able to metricize “contribution” vs “cost” of various nationalities has come to light – and mainly in Europe.
See… Euro countries count crimes by nationality, we don’t – in the US of course we care about “race”.
Be that as it may, Somalis (and Palestinians) score — as a group not individually – fairly low on the overall “contribution” matrix.
And there are always “wrinkles” in the stats: Like Palestinians being counted a “Kuwaitis” or “Lebanese” for complicated reasons.
This all has caused a lot of heartbreak and worry in Germany, Sweden etc. regards sex crimes, grenade fights (!), Afghans, Syrians etc.
Because what do you do about that, ethically?
D.A.
NYC
“Unlike Hepatitis A, it [Hep B] is not spread routinely through food or water. However, there have been instances in which Hepatitis B has been spread to babies when they have received food pre-chewed by an infected person.
What are ways Hepatitis B is not spread?
Hepatitis B virus is not spread by sharing eating utensils, breastfeeding, hugging, kissing, holding hands, coughing, or sneezing” (CDC, 2011)
https://web.archive.org/web/20111211154904/http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/b/bfaq.htm#transmission
Paul Offit ??) : “The source of infection could be shared towels, washcloths, nail clippers, toothbrushes or even partially eaten food or candies.”
In what specific ways for these cases?
Did someone clip their toenails, bleed on the clipper, and then someone used the clipper right away and chop into their toe?
Did someone’s gums bleed on the toothbrush and then the next person used it?
Was the “washcloth” used as a wound dressing, washed insufficiently, and then wiped on the face?
Did the 15,000 transmissions occur in the United States?
The “casual contact” link is a paywall.
“Did someone clip their toenails, bleed on the clipper, and then someone used the clipper right away and chop into their toe?”
You’d be shocked at what you can find in people’s nail clippings. As a corollary, one of the first things I learned as a microscopist is to never -EVER- look at your salad under a microscope. Just enjoy it.
“Did someone’s gums bleed on the toothbrush and then the next person used it?”
Almost everytime you brush you risk getting blood on a toothbrush.
“Was the “washcloth” used as a wound dressing, washed insufficiently, and then wiped on the face?”
Probably. That seems a likely route. I’ve seen many people lick a napkin then wipe their kid’s face. Hell, I’VE done it. The little boogers get filthy fast!
A mother’s spit and clean is responsible for a lot of transfers. 😁 I was involved in a research study on Helicobacter pylori and gastric cancer many years ago. The professor explained that people don’t usually get infected with H pylori after nine years old. I suspect that it might be because that’s the age that mothers stop spitting on their hanky to wipe a child’s face. 😁 My mum had it but she didn’t pass it on to any of her children. Maybe she didn’t wipe our faces enough 😁
..
Was that peer-reviewed?
If sharing common, everyday nail clippers, toothbrushes, washcloths, utensils, and food and drink is a reproducibly proven transmission vector for Hepatitis B, shouldn’t the infection rate be higher overall, and more than for sexual intercourse and sharing needles alone?
Gee. Thanks friends for all that. Never leaving this sofa now. 😉
Seriously, the whole Hep transmission has me wondering and… it is going to take up a lot of my time now.
D.A.
NYC
The highly contagious nature of blood transmission of hepatitis B was worked out in peer-reviewed epidemiologic studies many years ago, Bryan. You’d find them now in standard textbooks of microbiology and infectious diseases. I think the old “serum hepatitis” moniker stuck after a large outbreak among American servicemen during the Second World War was traced to a yellow fever vaccine made with (infected) human serum. Each of 300,000 soldiers must have received only a tiny amount of infected serum yet there were 50,000 cases of jaundice.
As knowledge developed, medical scientists continued to be astounded by how little blood (serum) it took to transmit disease. It depends on the viral load in the source blood but even well-looking chronically infected carriers* — the largest reservoir by far — can be highly infectious by blood-to-blood contact. We used to say as a rule of thumb, (literally, since interns and nurses often stuck needles into their clumsy left thumbs), that the risk of getting HIV from a single needlestick was 0.3%, for Hepatitis C it was 3%, and for HepB it was 30%. Before vaccine of course.) A scratch with a hollow needle containing residual blood was really scary especially if the patient had track marks. Adolescent vaccination is really aimed at neutralizing these future vectors.
The virus is inactivated with a dilute bleach solution but is stable on what we call fomites (like needles, tooth brushes, razors, nail clippers, and bramble thorns.)
Hepatitis B (chronic infection) is highly endemic in many tropical and Asian parts of the world. Nonetheless it is not contagious in ordinary contact outside a setting where personal-care implements that might get blood on them could be shared. There is a substantial risk of transmission during birth, which of course it the basis for recommending neonatal vaccination at least in high-risk situations. Infant infections are much more likely to become chronic. In populations with high prevalence of chronic infection in adults, most of these would have been mum-to-infant neonatal infections. Most adults will recover from acute infection with immunity and no chronic sequelae.
(* Strictly speaking they aren’t “carriers”, who by definition are infectious despite being healthy. Most with chronic infection will go on to get chronic active hepatitis of variable severity so they are all in some sense “sick.”)
Thanks, I follow that, but why vaccinate a newborn without known HepB in the mother or family? Are you suggesting it’s to prevent nosocomial infections?
Infants are getting so many vaccinations already – seemingly all at once, on a schedule – can’t they spread them out so the infant can recover? HepB AFAIK starts in the month of birth, with others in the following months. Adults don’t tend to get so many vaccines at once if they happen line up like that.
Or is it really so important for HepB in case the occasional nail clipping goes wrong (not flippant here, clipping infant nails is nerve-wracking)?
Nosocomial hepatitis B infection is one of those “never” events, especially with health-care workers under mandatory vaccination.
It’s only the mother you’d have the opportunity to test (during pregnancy or even in the delivery room if she shows up in labour without having any pre-natal care.) You won’t know about anyone else in the family. Depending on the epidemiology, you might guess that other members of the family, or others sharing the dwelling where the family lives, might well be chronically infected and contagious even if Mum isn’t.
The counsel of perfection is to vaccinate all infants. Publicly funded systems can’t adhere to the counsel of perfection, any more than an engineer will make a bridge strong enough to carry railway trains when it is connected only to roads that carry trucks, so Ontario doesn’t vaccinate all newborns routinely. It takes the chance — hey, it’s not my kid — that the occasional nail clipping draws blood from two different people without dropping the nail clipper into 70% ethanol between uses.
Is there any truth to the claim that there’s a relatively high incidence of false negatives (in testing mothers prior to the decision to vaccinate baby at birth or at 2 mos)? I heard that this morning on local radio when a host was questioning a fellow who I always thought was reasonable and knowledgeable, but he isn’t a medical doctor. His degrees are in microbiology and public health.
I don’t buy it as stated. The HepB virus vastly over-synthesizes excess amounts of its surface protein, what we call HBsAg. So you don’t see infectious virus particles in the blood of people without detectable HBsAg. You do see the reverse because HBsAg appears before infectivity and persists after infectivity has disappeared. Blood that is HBsAg- today is not infectious today.
The only plausible scenario would be an unvaccinated pregnant woman in labour today who got inoculated from sharing a needle (say) 44 days ago and is destined to get acute hepatitis anywhere from tomorrow to 136 days from now. If she is about to become ill in the next few weeks she will likely be already HBsAg+. Vaccinate the baby. But if she has a slowly incubating virus she might still be HBsAg-. She is not infectious to her newborn delivered today but a few weeks before she gets jaundice sometime in the next 136 days she will be.
In deciding about whether to trust a negative test and not vaccinate, you have to think, “How likely is the scenario that this pregnant woman in labour has incubating acute hepatitis B that is timed just right so that my test done on the day of delivery can’t pick it up yet?” To answer that you have to go to the background rates of acute hepatitis B in your community of pregnant women. If its high, — a pretty sad community, that, but they exist — you might just vaccinate all infants and not test any mothers at all: save the cost of the tests and buy more doses of vaccine with the money. But if it’s really low, then you’ll trust the negative test and not vaccinate the infant until he’s 12. If it’s somewhere in the middle then you have to make some transparent policy decision involving a tradeoff between unnecessary wasteful vaccination and harmful non-vaccination. If the vaccine cost $1000 a dose (as the early ones did) you might arrange to test the mother, or some mothers, repeatedly during the post-partum period to verify that you could trust the first negative test, and then vaccinate the baby if she turned positive, expecting that only a few mothers would. But if the vaccine costs $5, just vaccinate all infants on the day of delivery.
This is just an example of decision analysis.
Thanks, Leslie. Glad I asked. “Reasonable and knowledgeable” are good qualities, but don’t qualify one to make medical pronouncements.
I just had a couple of Celebrators on Saturday. Agreed. A fine doppelbock, rich, malty. I much prefer it to all those far over-hopped beers that are popular now. Recommended!
The French supermarket wolf commercial is wonderful. I hope it wins awards of all kinds, for creativity and video, whatever, so that other companies may be inspired to make something that is actually worth watching!
Something I consider excellent news: The state of Florida is suing the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) “accusing them of conspiring to mislead the public regarding the safety and necessity of ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors.”
Florida Sues Medical Giants Under RICO Act, Claims Gender Care Guidelines Rigged For Profit. Dec 9, 2025
https://www.aol.com/news/florida-sues-medical-giants-under-202820646.html
Here’s a tweet from science reporter Benjamin Ryan with a video clip of the Florida Attorney General talking about it for 85 seconds:
https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1998458731206684681
Two things – first; I think this lawsuit is misguided. I agree that WPATH deserves anything that undermines it and it’s objective. They have it coming for their mendacity. But the lawsuit -if I’m reading it right- seems entirely politically motivated. It’s a stretch to call it racketeering simply because they made money doing it. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the article has got it wrong.
Which brings me to the second thing; I had no idea AOL still existed! Does anyone remember the olde days when AOL used to mail floppy discs to everyone so you could join?
IANAL, but “conspiring” is a key word here. “Conspiracy” is by itself an illegal act in various circumstances.
What smells like a racket to me: Collusion between WPATH — fundamentally a political activist organization — and the Endocrine Society — politically captured — to make it appear their Standards of Care (here an improperly used legal term) were based on robust evidence when they were mostly based on circular reciprocal citation of each other’s opinions. The AAP has been suppressing dissident opinions for years in a concerted effort at the Board level. The result of this collusion is that insurance companies are manipulated into reimbursing these treatments as medically necessary, “because all the relevant professional medical associations say they are.”
If the State of Florida was suing WPATH just because WPATH is run by Democrats, then I could agree there was improper political motivation. But since just about everything trans is run by Democrats and the Democrat-led states don’t seem to be doing much on the anti-racketeering front, I guess the Republican states are going to have to take the lead here and run with it.
Cute advert, but the wolf isn’t vegetarian. He has cooked fish. I don’t think the advert called him vegetarian.
I was vegetarian decades before it became fashionable, and the worst meal I ever had was in Paris. It was little literally a big plate of cabbage with two walnut halves on top. My friends were all appalled. At the time, I was surprised to get anything at all in France.
I get annoyed about the fish thing because after notifying a hotel that I’m vegetarian, and travelling hours to get there, the hotel offered me a fish dish with no other option. When I told them that vegetarians don’t eat fish they said “the vegetarian we had in last week did”. 🤦♀️ As a past board member of the UK Vegetarian Society i was really hacked off, and was left hungry.
I hope I’m not alone in finding that enjoyable, well-made advert a bit insipid.
I agree, but they ladle on the sugar in christmas adverts, so it’s probably par for the course.
Slowly but surely, RFK, Jr. is getting his way. Drip, drip, drip. Surely anyone working for the CDC who cares about real science is desperately trying to find new employment. That kind of expertise isn’t easy to regenerate.
Re brain age stages, sort of:
I am of two minds about this. The US has a long and positive (in my opinion) tradition of religious tolerance. The Constitution (as amended) is the legal basis of religious freedom. The US has avoided the devastating religious conflicts that have torn other nation apart (the UK and France being bad examples).
Conversely, Measles is both deadly and highly contagious. Objections to the Measles vaccine go beyond religious objections. If anyone doubts this type ‘Measles for the one percent’ into Google. The article (in The Cut) condemns Waldorf schools as hotbeds of anti-vax sentiment. I got into considerable trouble at work, for my condemnation of Waldorf schools. I was shocked to find that the state of Mississippi has a higher vaccination rate than California (this was years ago).
“Friend” of WEIT and often (justly) criticized by PCC(E) Mr. Ross Dotard/Douthert of the NYTimes sends his kids to Waldorf schools in CT. Unsurprising.
There’s a nutty element which is like a universal solvent of stupid – it encompasses Christ Clapping AND anti-vax.
best to you Frank,
D.A.
NYC
From prior comments, I believe you are a lawyer. My impression is that USC CFR 101.3 does not give US citizenship to the children of foreign diplomats in the US. Is this correct? Have I identified the correct provision of the Federal code?
Re the vaccine section above, Current government health officials say that vaccines are questionable. Democrat health officials say that it’s possible to be born in the wrong body, people can change sex, and children should be taught that chopping off their genitals will make them happy. Both sides say that their ideology must not be questioned. It’s hard to point to a side that values evidence anymore.
I blame the French. Specifically, I blame M. Foucault. He came up (?) with the idea that reality does not exist, we have only a political interpretation of reality. The philosophy is more generally known as post-modernism.
‘Our state’s famously passive-aggressive ways might explain why it took a hard-edged, Eastern-bred U.S. attorney to uncover the Feeding Our Future mess. Andrew Luger, appointed to his second stint as U.S. Attorney for Minnesota in 2022, grew up in Cresskill, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Yonkers, New York. He played football at Amherst as an offensive lineman and earned his law degree at Georgetown. Minnesota was not in his frame of reference. “I’d never been west of Philadelphia,” he told me.
Regarding what hinterland frontier wilderness geographical locations are not in one’s frame of reference, Georgetown U. is approximately two degrees (120 nm) further west than Philadelphia. Giving Georgetown law school and Amherst their just academic due, it’s good that the gentleman had some familiarity with the geometry of oblate spheroids. From the writer’s and attorney general’s perspective, perhaps Minnesotans should drop the “passive” and follow the aggressive example of the “New York Minute” types, since that seems to have become more and more the norm during the last couple of decades across the fruited plain. What are New York messes compared to those of Minnesota?
An acquaintance once visited NYC. On arrival at the hotel, and surrounded by a swarm of van passengers refulgent with self-interest and regard for personal convenience, his was the last luggage offloaded. (He had no problem whatsoever with that. Someone necessarily had to be last, and he figured that there was a reasonable possibility that he would get his luggage. The van driver thanked him for his patience, as if being patient was an exceptional and unusual behavior.
Some years ago, a contributor to the NY Times’s “Metropolitan Diary” column stated that, while standing at an intersection waiting to cross, she observed a driver who had a red light. There were no other cars. When the light turned green, the driver (presumably out of habit and predisposition) blew his horn.