Free Republic

Why would any Jew (or Christian for that matter) live in Iran voluntarily?

Most left. Back in 2012 I was with a group that had an Iranian Israeli tour guide for 3 days. Her family left Iran after the revolution in 1979.

The new board doesn’t take office til January.

“lunch at Brotherhood of Thieves” You can’t make this stuff up!

According to Wikipedia it's in Nantucket. Someone should write a poem commemorating this.

There once was a president in Nantucket.....

The article doesn’t even mention the age of death of those who were not vaccinated versus those who were. It also doesn’t mention the comorbidities of the populations in question.

If I knew I had had 2 doses of MMR I might be interested in doing a titer. Back in 1989 I wasn't sure what Measles vaccine I had as a child prior to the MMR. There had been numerous cases of people born in the 1960's who had been vaccinated with early versions of Measles vaccines in childhood getting Measles in college. I was also taking graduate courses and didn't want the downtime if I got Measles. There was also the fact that there was a major outbreak with thousands of cases in Houston where I was living. There was a pretty good probability of actually coming into contact with people who had it.

I have since read that people who got killed Measles vaccines as children were actually at higher risk of getting pneumonia if they later got Measles. The CDC and WHO recommendation for those who were vaccinated with killed Measles vaccines is to get 2 doses of the MMR at least 28 days apart.

I'm pretty sure I got an MMR in 1971 when there was a mass vaccination in schools in Texas and other states for Rubella as the vaccine for Rubella had just recently been approved and had very quickly been incorporated into the MMR. I remember reading the materials distributed with the vaccination program. It mentioned that the vaccine also protected against Mumps. I though that was strange since I had had the Mumps 4 years earlier. I have far superior immunity to Mumps than the vaccine gives. Anyway if I were a young adult who only had protection against the Mumps from MMR vaccinations, I just might want to consider getting a third MMR upon graduation from high school or entry into college. The Mumps component seems to be the weakest link in the MMR. Lots of young adults get Mumps in college, sports teams, or the military even though they have been vaccinated as children. Fortunately they seem to get milder cases than people who have never been vaccinated. That's a good thing, because immunologically naive adults who get Mumps often get swelling in the gonads.

Mumps can actually cause sterility especially in males. That happened to my father's brother. Both my father and his brother got Mumps at the same time, but my father was only 4 while his brother was 18. From what I've been told it was horribly painful in addition to leaving him sterile.

Ranked choice elections need to be resolved within 48 hours of poll closing for me to accept its expansion. It’s ridiculous that elections in some states take 3 or 4 weeks to count.

The vaccine against Measles is highly effective. The MMR is normally given in 2 doses, one at the age of 1 year and the other at 4 to 7 years. The CDC used to think that only 1 dose was needed for lifetime immunity. Unfortunately it was learned in the 1980’s that some people don’t get enough immunity after just 1 dose at the age of 1 year.

There was an El Al female flight attendant in her early 40’s who got Measles from exposure at work in April 2019. She had had the WHO recommended 1 MMR vaccination when she was a year old back in the late 1970’s. Unfortunately she did not get the second MMR dose recommended after a serious outbreak of Measles in the late 1980’s. In 1991 WHO and CDC recommended a second dose of MMR. I got an additional dose in 1989, because I was living in Houston where there were several thousand cases, so I have the now recommended second dose. Anyway the flight attendant went into a coma in Apri 2019, never regained consciousness, and died in August 2019. As a result of her case of Measles, El Al required all their flight crew to get another dose and set up a vaccination clinic at their hub in Tel Aviv. in short Measles is not a minor disease. It needs to be prevented with very effective vaccines.

No! Measles is a DNA virus not an RNA virus. It has a much lower mutation rate. The vaccine for Measles lasts a lifetime with about 97% efficacy against symptomatic disease for those who have 2 doses. Even those who might get symptoms after exposure tend to have light cases. The problem is that many children missed their normal schedule of vaccinations during the COVID pandemic. There are now enough unvaccinated young children for the most easily transmitted viral disease known to medical science, that it is now possible to sustain outbreaks of Measles among unvaccinated infants and toddlers.

There are lots of antivaxers in Ukraine where my wife is from and where there were over 50K cases of Measles in 2019. I laid down the law and told my wife I absolutely prohibited our son from traveling to Ukraine before getting his first Measles vaccination. Actually I have that legal power under the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. Due to COVID, it wasn't practical for our son to travel to Ukraine before his first birthday, so we ended up getting him his first dose on the nominal CDC childhood vaccine schedule at the age of 1 year. We celebrated his first birthday, and had his normal 1 year vaccines given at an appointment the day after his birthday. It is possible to get the Measles vaccine as early as 6 months for travel to endemic areas, but that vaccination would not count towards the lifetime total minimum of 2.

He ended up traveling to Ukraine at the age of almost 19 months. He was enjoying himself with new friends in Odessa, but then Putin ratcheted up the threats against Ukraine. My wife and son ended up having to escape from Ukraine on the third day of the war.

It’s standard, but due to antivaxxers, there are large numbers of children unvaccinated against Measles.

Now with the outbreak, they will be vaccinating every child 6 months and older. Normally pediatricians don’t give vaccinations for live vaccines like the Measles vaccine til after a child reaches 1 year old. In an outbreak, they will vaccinate infants 6 months to 11 months as well. The main caveat to vaccinating early is that the immunity probably won’t last as long. As a consequence any Measles vaccinations given before the ate of 12 months do not count towards the lifetime vaccine requirement. That means those children will still need 2 vaccinations after the age of 1. The second one normally comes between the ages of 4 and 7.

Lots of children missed their normal childhood series of vaccinations during the COVID pandemic. Even before COVID, some countries like Ukraine had large outbreaks of Measles. I refused to let my wife take our son to Ukraine til he had his first Measles vaccination due to more than 50K cases in 2019.

So was Smallpox. It’s much better to get vaccinated against Measles. It used to be one of the major causes of blindness, deafness, and mental retardation among children.

So is it a love crime?

bankwalker My headline for this story is:

“Suspect in LGBTQ club attack is LGBTQ”

So it can't be a hate crime.

We’re gaining lots of Hispanic voters in south Texas. We did pick up a Congressional district in the RGV.

The Russian military will take them.

After Republicans took over my county after the 2008 elections, the county commission cleaned up the voter rolls in the county. All addresses were ground truthed. The entire voting roll was referenced in a GIS database. Anomalies in noted and checked out. If 40 people were registered at an address that turned out to be a liquor store, the voters registered there were purged from the list. If someone was registered to vote in the county but had a personal car registered in another county, that person was purged. Likewise people registered in the county but taking a homestead exemption in another county were purged. I talked to the top advisor to the county Republican party. He said that something like 10% of the registered “voters” in the county were purged prior to the 2010 elections. On election night the 28 year incumbent congressman was 799 votes behind his Republican challenger. I’m pretty sure the purge of ineligible voters played a big part in taking the seat as well as motivating a huge anti incumbent turnout against our do nothing congressman.

I’d rather feed him to coyotes than bury him.

You forgot the Dodgers moved?