A century ago a child got one vaccine. Smallpox, carrying about 200 viral proteins. The entire childhood schedule today carries fewer viral proteins than that single shot did, because they're much more pure and targeted. Young children typically get four to six fevers a year from ordinary infections. Each one is a bigger challenge to the immune system than the shots at a well baby visit. I spoke with New York magazine's @nia_prater. Save and send to a parent or a pediatrician: Read & subscribe for free:

After 2024, the heartland looked like a wasteland for Dems. But in 2026, amid broad discontent over Trump II, they are seriously contesting more Senate & Gov races in the region than at any point since the early Obama years. My take.

No GOP Senate candidate in Trump 1 won in a state where Trump's approval is as low as it is now in MI; only Collins 20 won where he was net neg at all. AES prob needs only ~82-85% of Trump disapprovers to win; every D but 1 in Trump 1 won 89% or more. AES could fail, but low bar

Anatomy of a MAGA Smear How @DailyMail @GOP and some right-wing influencers turned an El-Sayed accomplishment into a grossly dishonest attack And how its spread across social media is a sign of our political dysfunction

@CitizenCohn I have long felt that in modern Politics voting decisions are made long in advance of when voters will admit they are made. And D committees, and candidates, with less money than R's are left to play the old game.....that elections start Sept 1st, while minds influenced now.

🧵More vaccines do not mean more distinct antigens. The childhood vaccine schedule contained 3,217 antigenic components in 1960 and 3,041 by the 1980s. Today, owing to better formulations, it's about 165 antigens across the current pediatric schedule 1/2

The MMR vaccine has been studied in more than 23 million children across six decades, much of that work funded by the department @SecKennedy now runs. Last night on CNN he told American parents it is hard to determine whether it is safe. He is lying. Here is the evidence. 🧵

NEW Yesterday I chased down the details on this MAGA attack about El-Sayed and animal control in Detroit Including a former official who was there The attack—which is all over social media—looks like total nonsense Full story here

Japan is also the best natural experiment ever run on MMR and autism. A total population study in Yokohama tracked every child born from 1988 to 1996. Children born in 1993 or later got zero MMR doses. Autism incidence in those cohorts was 97 to 161 per 10,000, roughly double the 48 to 86 in the earlier cohorts that received MMR. Autism kept rising after the withdrawal, on the same trajectory as every country that kept vaccinating. 33 years later, Japan's national insurance data show 3.26% of children born in 2014 diagnosed with autism by age 5, among the highest rates reported anywhere. None of those children received an MMR. The one country that eliminated MMR has the same autism rate as the countries that kept it. 3/

Alito (majority) finds Trump statements don't demonstrate racial animus, but can't bring himself to quote any of them Kagan (dissent) notes this, then supplies some quotes "It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community," she observes