Berkeley is a center of the anti-vax movement. The #1 and #2 schools in California within the highest percentage of unvaccinated children are both here in Berkeley. According to Berkeleyside, at the Berkeley Rose Waldorf School, only 29% of kindergartners have been vaccinated. This isn’t because the parents don’t understand the risks. These are pricey private schools, and almost all the parents have at least one college degree. This also isn’t because there is less need today for vaccinating children than there used to be. Measles cases in the U.S. are now at a 25 year high. So, will Berkeley parents get their kids vaccinated for Covid once the vaccine becomes generally available? Although I am constantly telling people not to play amateur doctor, I am going to do that now. I have come up with vaccination advice that is a compromise. I have something in it to please the doctors and something to please the anti-vaxxers. Here it is, the Tarses Theory of Vaccination: If you are a parent, you don’t need to vaccinate all your children. You only need to vaccinate the ones you want to keep. What do you think? Will that please everyone? Below is a famous photo of 2 boys, both age 16, taken around 1900. This photo appeared in newspapers around the world. Both boys were exposed to smallpox at the same time and from the same source. One boy was vaccinated. The other boy wasn’t.

COVID VACCINATION CERTIFICATES.

Saga Cruise Line has become the first cruise ship company to require that all passengers have proof of Covid vaccination. I expect that by summer, all the other cruise ship lines will require this as well. By Fall, I think we are all going to be carrying proof of vaccination in order to get into places, like colleges and dorms. My second guess is that society is going to have a lot of trouble from people into conspiracy theories, not just the anti-vaxxers. For example, a lot of websites claim that Covid vaccines contain tracking microchips or some voodoo drug that turns people into mindless zombies. Have you ever noticed that the more preposterous a conspiracy theory is, the more likely people are to believe it? It reminds me of Dr. Goebbel’s (Hitler’s propaganda minister) theory that people are far more likely to believe a big lie rather than a small one.