[ExI] Trump suggests not letting Iran 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego

[John Clark]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2026 at 4:57 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

*> it worked, some.  It was better than nothing.  But plenty of people
> caught after getting the mRNA vaccine, and plenty transmitted after getting
> the vaccine. *


*There you go again peddling medical misinformation that is not only wrong,
it is LETHAL!*
*==*

*ME:** In the USA at the height of the Covid pandemic how much did getting
the recommended two shots of the mRNA vaccine a couple of weeks apart
reduce the risk of getting Covid and how much did it reduce the risk of
death?*

*GPT*: "At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the
original two-dose mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna *substantially
reduced the risk of both getting COVID-19 and dying from it*. But there is
an important distinction: the vaccines were more consistently effective at
preventing severe disease and death than at preventing infection itself. The
exact percentages depend on when you measure them, which variant is
circulating, and how long it has been since the second dose. T*he best
estimates** of getting infected with Covid is about  90% lower after taking
the vaccine, the risk of dying from it was about  90–96% lower. *

In a CDC study published in June 2021, researchers followed nearly 4,000
health care personnel, first responders, and other essential workers. After
two mRNA doses, the risk of infection was 91% lower than among unvaccinated
participants. This included infections without symptoms.

CDC data covering 13 U.S. jurisdictions from April through July 2021 found
that *unvaccinated people had substantially higher age-adjusted death rates
than fully vaccinated people.*

   -

   *April 4–June 19: the* *death rate among unvaccinated people was 16.6
   times higher.*
   -

   *June 20–July 17: it was 11.3 times higher.*

Those correspond to approximately 94% and 91% lower death rates,
respectively, among fully vaccinated people."

*==*
*And thanks to Donald's Luddite health secretary Robert Kennedy Junior the
deaths continue, this time from measles:*


*==*

*ME:** In the USA how does the current measles epidemic compare with past
outbreaks of the disease and what could be the cause of this increase?*

*GPT: "*The U.S. *measles outbreak is now much more serious than the
outbreaks Americans experienced for most of the past 25 **years*. As of October
8, 2026, the CDC reported 4,080 confirmed cases in 2026, already far above the
2,289 cases reported during all of 2025. *The principal explanation is
declining vaccination **coverage*, especially in communities where measles can
spread rapidly among people who are not immune.

For historical perspective, before measles vaccination became widespread,
the United States experienced an estimated 3–4 million infections every
year, with tens of thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths.
The current outbreak is nowhere near that pre-vaccine burden, but it is *an
extraordinary reversal after measles was declared eliminated from
continuous domestic transmission in 2000.*

The proportion of U.S. kindergartners with the recommended MMR vaccination
has fallen from 95.2% in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.4% in 2025 2026.*
Measles is extraordinarily contagious:* around 90% of susceptible close
contacts may become infected, *so about 95% coverage is generally needed to
stop sustained measles transmission*. The national average also conceals
local communities with much lower coverage. *Vaccine hesitancy is one
plausible contributor to the decline in coverage*.

The proportion of U.S. kindergartners with the recommended MMR vaccination
has fallen from 95.2% in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.4% in
2025–2026. *About
95% coverage is generally needed to stop sustained measles transmission*.
The national average also conceals local communities with much lower
coverage. The current resurgence is not evidence that the vaccine has
stopped working; it is evidence that protection breaks down at the
community level when too many people remain unvaccinated.

Measles is not simply a harmless childhood rash. *It can cause pneumonia,
brain inflammation, and death*. The good news is that *the MMR
measles* *vaccine
is highly effective: two doses are about 97% effective at preventing
measles."*

*John K Clark*
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