Thoughts on allergies. Brief war news. Oksana's big adventure.

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The theory that vaccines can lead to childhood allergies goes something like this. Vaccines introduce infectious agents, active or otherwise, into a person's body stimulating it to produce antibodies. Because such agents are expensive to produce and may be short-lived, vaccines include mercury and aluminum-based adjuvants to further stimulate (irritate) the body's immune system to get it to produce enough antibodies.  The stimulated immune system reacts to every foreign protein in its environment and prepares appropriate immune responses. These may include foods such as peanuts, pollens and other stuff. The theory, supported by statistical correlations, is that more highly vaccinated children suffer more allergies. 

I am allergic to grass pollen.  It turns out that I had three DPT shots during the spring-summer allergy season my first year.  Correlation?  Might be.

In place of the three shots I got in my first year from Dr. Marsh, who obviously believed in their benefit, the CDC childhood vaccination schedule now calls for about 25.  Do children get sick any less often?  Do they get autism any more often?  More allergies?  More autoimmune diseases?  Inquiring minds are just asking.

Joel Hay recently recommended another YouTube commentator on the Ukraine war, A Tippling Philosopher. The video I watched went over the statistics on Russian battlefield losses. His conclusion is that even Russia cannot afford to continue to lose more than a thousand people a day. They are burning through their huge inventory of Soviet era armored vehicles at a good clip. Something has to give. They are gaining ground in the east, overcoming Ukraine's prepared defenses and increasingly able to attack air defense and other systems in the rear.

You all read about the massive missile attack on Ukraine Thursday morning. Though there were several injuries, there were no deaths here in Kyiv. I read nothing about the two explosions I heard this morning at about 5 o'clock. I do not understand why Russia continues its terror tactics. They are expensive and they have simply not achieved anything.

You also read about the nightclub attack in Moscow. Putin blames Ukraine, but the case seems week. It is out of character, besides which it is much more in character for ISIS, who claim responsibility. Russian civilians are dying in Belgorod, but that seems to be because the whole city is an armed camp and hitting civilians cannot be avoided. Russians, the world’s most practiced hypocrites, are complaining that Ukrainians occasionally hit civilians in a war they all seem to support? C’mon!

Although the global fertility rate has dropped to replacement level, the world's population will continue to rise for another couple of decades. It is the pig in the python effect. Folks in their 50s and 60s are more numerous than the silent generation cohort that is dying off. It will take a while for the population pyramid to reshape itself into a stovepipe.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good-looking woman is off on an adventure to Uzhgorod, right on the Slovakian border.  She, Eddie and Zoriana took the night train.  She rented a car for the first time in her life, giving them more freedom to explore.  I'm happy to be home.  Back on the exercise bike after a week and working on a PowerPoint/video presentation of The Indoctrinated Brain, applying what I have read to my observations about what's happening to my mind as I age.  I conclude with the observation that Ron Paul, Clint Eastwood, Helmuth Nyborg and Dr. Kenneth Cooper are sharp as tacks at around 90.  They stay both physically and mentally active.

Graham