But before going into my topic of the day, I wondered why that huge (#6 on all-time list) earthquake did not produce a gigantic tsunami (from the Star-Advertiser):The most recent event had an estimated magnitude of 8.7 or 8.8 on the scale scientists use to measure the strength of earthquakes. By contrast, catastrophic tsunamis in the past, including a wave that struck Indonesia in 2004 and another that hit Japan in 2011, were generated by a quake of about magnitude 9. That might sound comparable to Wednesday’s quake, Melgar said, but it is significantly bigger. That’s because the earthquake scale is logarithmic: A magnitude- 9 event possesses about 10 times as much energy as a magnitude-8.7 event, and about three times as much energy as a magnitude-8.8 event. Also, current models suggest that Wednesday’s earthquake occurred across a stretch of seafloor that was hundreds of miles long. The longer the quake, the more energetic the tsunami can be.
For example, the largest earthquake ever was the Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960 from the coastline of Valdivia, a 9.4 moment magnitude, although some sources went as high as 9.6.
- At that 9.4 figure, produced 8 times more energy than the recent 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake
- You can calculate yourself this comparison:
To compare the energy released by two earthquakes, calculate the energy released for each earthquake using their respective magnitudes, then divide the larger energy value by the smaller one. The formula to estimate energy release from magnitude is log E = 5.24 + 1.44Mw, where Mw is the moment magnitude.
- Hilo, Hawaii, 6200 miles away, was in 1960 struck by a tsunami of 35 feet (61 deaths) or 7 times higher than the 5 feet recorded there yesterday.
- The second largest was the 1964 Alaska Prince William Sound earthquake of 9.2, #3 the 2004 Indonesian Great Sumatra Earthquake also at 9.2, #4 the Japan Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 and #5 the Russian Kamchatka Earthquake of 1952, which caused 12 foot waves over Hilo, with no casualties.
- Land-based earthquakes have had more deaths.
- #1 300,000 fatalities from the 1976 China Tangshan Earthquake of 7.6 moment magnitude.
- #2 273,000 fatalities from the 1920 China Haiyuan Earthquake of 7.6 MM.
- #3 250,000 fatalities from the 526 Antioch, Byzantine Empire (now Turkey) Earthquake of 7.0 MM.
- #4 230,000 fatalities from the 1139 Ganja (now Azerbaijan) Earthquake of 7.0 MM.
- #5 227,898 fatalities from the 2004 Great Sumatra Earthquake of 9.2 MM. Note that those others above occurred on land, while this one occurred 100 miles away at sea, so the resultant tsunami caused the deaths.
Now on to my posting of today. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long espoused a belief that routine childhood vaccinations are linked to autism. During his confirmation hearing he was severely questioned on this issue:
- The Autism Science Foundation has a web page on the science of autism and vaccines.
- From the Center for American Progress, RFK Jr:
...altered research priorities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by canceling studies on mRNA vaccines and vaccine hesitancy as well as by closing a network of centers working to prevent future pandemics. He reduced transparency by limiting public comment opportunitiesduring the development of new regulations. And, alarmingly, he hired David Geier, a known vaccine skeptic who Maryland regulators disciplined for practicing medicine without a license, to lead a study to reinvestigate the long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.
David Geier is not a physician and only has a bachelor's degree His father Mark, is a doctor, who just passed away earlier this year. His medical license was suspended by seven states. David is known to have given autistic children a dangerous, unapproved drug and improperly prescribed puberty blockers. Read this article: Practiced Unlicensed Medicine on Autistic Kids.
- 508 million cases of illnesses were prevented by vaccinations of children in the U.S. from 1994-2023
- 32 million hospitalizations were prevented by vaccinations during this period.
- One million individuals thus lived.
- In 1998, a paper in The Lancet (as respected as the AMA Journal, Science and Nature), the British medical journal, suggested a link between the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine and AUTISM. This significantly alarmed parents and the public. Vaccination rates dropped and outbreaks of measles surged. There was one major problem: the PAPER WAS WRONG.
- Research headed by British physician Andrew Wakefield.
- Only 12 children were examine in the study.
- Worse, all the parents of these students believed the MMR vaccine had harmed their children.
- Further, Wakefield failed to disclose that he was being paid by lawyers preparing a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers of this vaccine.
- Furthermore, other researchers could not replicate the results.
- In 2010, the British General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and a dozen years after publication, fully retracted his paper as utterly false. Wakefield lost his medical license.
- Unfortunately the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism had widely spread online, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
- Large-scale studies involving hundred of thousands of children across many countries found NO LINK between ANY VACCINE and AUTISM.
- First of all, around 75% of those with dementia have Alzheimer's Disease.
- Over 7 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and this number will almost double to 13 million by 2050.
- There are nearly 12 million Americans providing unpaid care for people with any kind of dementia.
- While healthcare cost will reach $384 billion this year, unpaid caregivers provide help at a value of another $413 billion/year. This total will go up to $2 trillion in 2050.
- Twice as many women have this disease compared to men.
Here is a medical paper that seems to say the following:- A growing literature supports a protective association between vaccines targeting an array of pathogens (e.g., influenza, pneumococcus, herpes zoster) and the risk of Alzheimer disease (AD). This statement says that vaccines (like the regular flu shot) actually protect you from Alzheimer's.
- Vaccinations also activate the immune system, of course, which is how they promote immunity to pathogens. As a result, it is also possible that they would promote AD pathology, thereby worsening it. Or, in other words, yes, vaccines could cause AD.
- You can read the entire journal article and be as confused as I am. Good luck. I only scanned this paper.
- The England Journal of Medicine has an article titled: Do Vaccines Raise or Lower Risk for Dementia? The Jury Remains Out.
- While the jury remains out, which means they're not sure, here is a quote from the abstract.
Contrary to their expectations, the authors found that, compared with no exposure, vaccination was associated with increased risk for dementia (odds ratio, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.36–1.40), most of which was associated with influenza and pneumococcal immunization. In addition, dementia risk rose with an increasing number of administered vaccines, with the greatest increase immediately after the end of the 2-year lag.
- And a further comment.
As the authors note, these data do not support a role for vaccination to prevent dementia. Moreover, the observed increase in risk with vaccination was unexpected — and not clearly biologically plausible. As the authors and editorialists point out, unmeasured and confounding detection biases probably account for these results; for example, people with dementia may be more likely to be vaccinated due to caregivers' concerns or because of residence in skilled nursing facilities. The findings in this study are not the last word on the issue.
- So I thought I would go to Google's AI Overview.
- Several recent studies suggest that far from causing dementia, some routine vaccinations may actually be associated with a reduced risk of developing it later in life.
- A study examining over 130 million people found a link between routine vaccinations and a lower risk of dementia.
- Research published in February 2025 showed that people who had received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who had not. This protective effect was found to be even stronger in women.
Those human research studies caused me mild concern. Liked the Artificial Intelligence version better.
So a final analysis:
- Vaccinations DO NOT cause autism.
- Vaccinations might cause some types of dementia, but more probably not. On the other hand, it appears that taking the shingles vaccine lowers the rate of dementia, plus other vaccines could similarly be beneficial to retard the onset of dementia.
- Or, childhood vaccines do a lot more good than bad, with maybe no measurable bad, while vaccines also are generally beneficial for the eldest generation, with more research needed to confirm this belief.
- The current Trump administration will tend to be anti-vaccination, so individuals will themselves need to determine if any available vaccination needs to be taken. Do you heed political or scientific/medical recommendations? One longer term problem, JFK Jr, secretary of Health and Human Resources, is reducing funds for the development of the best science for future vaccines.
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