#PEDIATRICIAN FOR INFANTS AND CHILDREN

[joga-blog]

BEST PEDIATRIC SPECIALIST IN VIJAYAWADA

Dr K. Siva Kumar: Trusted pediatric care and neonatal specialist offering comprehensive medical attention for infants, children, and adolescents. From routine check-ups to specialized treatments, ensure your child's health and well-being with expert care.

[drsumitchakravarty]

Find Best Pediatrician in Faridabad

Pediatrician in Faridabad: Providing Expert Care for Your Child

Are you seeking the best pediatrician in Faridabad for your child's health needs? Look no further than Dr. Sumit Chakravarty, a trusted name in pediatric care in the region. When it comes to your child's health, you want a compassionate and experienced doctor who understands their unique needs. Dr. Chakravarty brings years of expertise and a commitment to providing the highest quality care to every child he sees.

As a dedicated pediatrician in Faridabad, Dr. Chakravarty offers comprehensive medical services tailored specifically for children. From routine check-ups to specialized care, he is here to support your child's health journey every step of the way.

Child Doctor in Faridabad: Your Partner in Your Child's Health

Finding the right child doctor in Faridabad is crucial for ensuring your little one's well-being. Dr. Sumit Chakravarty is renowned for his personalized approach to pediatric medicine. He believes in building strong relationships with both children and parents to deliver the best possible care.

Whether it's a common cold, developmental concern, or ongoing health issue, Dr. Chakravarty is equipped to handle a wide range of pediatric conditions. His gentle demeanor and expertise make him a favorite among families seeking compassionate healthcare for their children.

Children's Healthcare in Faridabad: Holistic Approach to Pediatric Wellness

Dr. Sumit Chakravarty's clinic is a hub for children's healthcare in Faridabad, offering a holistic approach to pediatric wellness. Beyond treating illnesses, Dr. Chakravarty focuses on preventive care and overall health promotion. Regular check-ups and timely interventions are key to ensuring your child grows up healthy and happy.

From infancy through adolescence, Dr. Chakravarty provides tailored care that addresses the physical, emotional, and developmental aspects of each child. He understands that every child is unique and requires individualized attention.

Pediatric Care in Faridabad: Services Tailored to Your Child's Needs

Pediatric care in Faridabad encompasses a wide spectrum of services aimed at optimizing children's health. Dr. Sumit Chakravarty offers a comprehensive range of pediatric services, including:

- Newborn care and infant health assessments

- Childhood vaccinations and immunizations

- Developmental screenings and milestones evaluations

- Treatment for common childhood illnesses

- Management of chronic conditions such as asthma or allergies

- Nutritional guidance and growth monitoring

- Behavioral and emotional support for children and families

Dr. Chakravarty's clinic is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities to ensure accurate diagnosis and effective treatment for various pediatric conditions.

Infant Health Faridabad: Nurturing Your Baby's Growth

Ensuring optimal infant health in Faridabad starts with attentive pediatric care. Dr. Sumit Chakravarty specializes in newborn and infant care, providing essential support during this crucial stage of development. From breastfeeding guidance to monitoring growth milestones, Dr. Chakravarty partners with parents to promote healthy beginnings for their babies.

New parents can rely on Dr. Chakravarty for expert advice on infant nutrition, sleep patterns, and common concerns like colic or reflux. By addressing these early challenges, he helps lay a strong foundation for a lifetime of good health.

Pediatric Immunization Near Me: Protecting Your Child from Preventable Diseases

Pediatric immunization near me Faridabad is a vital aspect of preventive healthcare for children. Dr. Sumit Chakravarty emphasizes the importance of vaccinations in safeguarding children against serious diseases. His clinic follows national immunization schedules and provides a safe environment for administering vaccines.

Dr. Chakravarty educates parents about the significance of vaccinations and addresses any concerns they may have. By staying up-to-date with recommended immunizations, you can protect your child and contribute to community immunity.

Why Choose Dr. Sumit Chakravarty for Pediatric Care in Faridabad?

- Expertise: Dr. Chakravarty brings years of experience in pediatric medicine.

- Compassionate Care: He values building trusting relationships with families.

- Holistic Approach: Emphasizing preventive care and overall well-being.

- Family-Centered Practice: Focused on supporting parents in their child's health journey.

Dr. Sumit Chakravarty is committed to delivering exceptional pediatric care that prioritizes your child's health and happiness. Schedule a consultation today and experience the difference firsthand.

In conclusion, if you're searching for a pediatrician in Faridabad who genuinely cares about your child's health and well-being, look no further than Dr. Sumit Chakravarty. His dedication, expertise, and compassionate approach make him a standout choice for families seeking top-notch pediatric care. Remember, your child's health is precious—trust it to a pediatrician who understands and prioritizes their needs.

[rafeslvbug]

introducing…pediatrician!rafe

back to basics!! (physical)

height: 6”3 at minimum, the type of height where he can be assertive if needed with other doctors, or appear gentle to patients if he kneels down. some of the boys he has as patients, always say they aspire to be like “doctor cameron” and the dads are always envious of his height, as men are.

age: early 30s. had to do years of training && education. considerably young in his respective field, but widely praised for his efficiency and ability.

build: works out daily. believes in keeping peak physical fitness to take care of his patients. scrubs fir too tightly over his muscles. could be prone to ripping. mothers often find themselves staring a bit too long at their kid’s doctor.

looks!! (specific)

arms: consistent with any !rafe au, he’s got massive arms. but this is because

- a: to carry patients if need be (though he works with children) - you never know when emergencies might come up,

- b: he finds that having bigger arms is more comforting for little children when he has to hold them

- c: has to handle hospital equipment that might be heavy, and he’s a gentleman so he’s always helping people carry equipment if he’s not busy.

pager && watch: his pager is forever on him, not that he has no life outside of work, just that he cares so much about his patients. he won’t hesitate to cancel a day off for the sake of his patients. his watch is of course because of how much rafe is invested in his fitness and health. needs it to track his workouts and steps etc. or he also likes how convenient it is, to access emails or messages etc.

personality

patient: eternally patient. during arguments. meltdowns. when the baby’s been crying all night. all calm words and gentle movements. never yells. controls his anger and doesn’t make huge outbursts. even when stressed (unless it reaches an extremely bad point - this is rare)

multi-tasking: can put the baby to sleep in one arm and type up an article/report with the other hand while in bed. listens to research podcasts while cooking dinner so he doesn’t have to find time to do it later. efficiency is key. his job is already time consuming, and he wants to make sure he has as much free time as possible.

attentive: rafe’s busy. he’s always working overtime or being called away because of an unexpected patient issue. but when he’s at home with you? his pager isn’t off..but it’s not on his person all the time. he’s able to maintain work-life balance and he’ll listen to everything you have to say about your day. he loves your daughter to bits, and frequently says she’s his, always checking up on her and making sure she’s healthy (as doctors habitually do)

job

specialist position: neonatologist - someone who mainly looks after premature babies’ development and intensive care for infants.

salary: $350,000+ (excluding bonuses and potential to increase)

reputation: young, but well respected. considered one of the best in his field in the hospital. always gets compliments from patients, and dedicated to his work.

likes

stress-free days without overtime. he lives for any ounce of free time, no matter how satisfied his job makes him. likes to be home, likes having time go on hikes or play with your baby.

getting called your baby’s father. he loves it when he gets to say he’s the dad, or when you call him the dad. even if he’s not biologically her dad, he’s the only one who’s been present. adopts her relatively quick.

picking your daughter up from daycare. loves the way her face lights up when she sees him, how she’ll run as fast as her little legs can take her and getting to scoop her up into the car.

when you come to him for help. whether it’s with your daughter or anything tbf. he loves helping, loves being the person you rely on.

dislikes

when you go to a different doctor for help with your daughter. if anything starts arguments it’s that. he wants to be the one to look after her, because it’s all he’s done since she was born. he thinks of himself as her father, and wants you to too. a father looks after his daughter.

patients who bring in their children for dumb reasons. a common cold? wasting his time because they act like they’ve never had a cold before. children in his care are in critical condition, not basic colds, and these people are usually insufferable because they force themselves to the top of his list of priorities.

your ex. never even met him, never even seen him. hates him. loves that he left in a way, because it means he could be in your life, but hates the man for what he put you through.

pet names

he gives you: baby, sweetheart, babygirl, honey, busy lady

you give him: doc, handsome, honey, baby, darling

what he’ll call your daughter: sweetie, pumpkin, little lady,

[reasonsforhope]

Flint, Michigan, has one of the [United States]'s highest rates of child poverty — something that got a lot of attention during the city's lead water crisis a decade ago. And a pediatrician who helped expose that lead problem has now launched a first-of-its-kind move to tackle poverty: giving every new mother $7,500 in cash aid over a year.

A baby's first year is crucial for development. It's also a time of peak poverty.

Flint's new cash transfer program, Rx Kids, starts during pregnancy. The first payment is $1,500 to encourage prenatal care. After delivery, mothers will get $500 a month over the baby's first year.

"What happens in that first year of life can really portend your entire life course trajectory. Your brain literally doubles in size in the first 12 months," says Hanna-Attisha, who's also a public health professor at Michigan State University.

A baby's birth is also a peak time for poverty. Being pregnant can force women to cut back hours or even lose a job. Then comes the double whammy cost of child care.

Research has found that stress from childhood poverty can harm a person's physical and mental health, brain development and performance in school. Infants and toddlers are more likely than older children to be put into foster care, for reasons that advocates say conflate neglect with poverty.

In Flint, where the child poverty rate is more than 50%, Hanna-Attisha says new moms are in a bind. "We just had a baby miss their 4-day-old appointment because mom had to go back to work at four days," she says...

Benefits of Cash Aid

Studies have found such payments reduce financial hardship and food insecurity and improve mental and physical health for both mothers and children.

The U.S. got a short-lived taste of that in 2021. Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit, boosting payments and also sending them to the poorest families who had been excluded because they didn't make enough to qualify for the credit. Research found that families mostly spent the money on basic needs. The bigger tax credit improved families' finances and briefly cut the country's child poverty rate nearly in half.

"We saw food hardship dropped to the lowest level ever," Shaefer says. "And we saw credit scores actually go to the highest that they'd ever been in at the end of 2021."

Critics worried that the expanded credit would lead people to work less, but there was little evidence of that. Some said they used the extra money for child care so they could go to work.

As cash assistance in Flint ramps up, Shaefer will be tracking not just its impact on financial well-being, but how it affects the roughly 1,200 babies born in the city each year.

"We're going to see if expectant moms route into prenatal care earlier," he says. "Are they able to go more? And then we'll be able to look at birth outcomes," including birth weight and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.

Since the pandemic, dozens of cash aid pilots have popped up across the nation. But unlike them, Rx Kids is not limited to lower-income households. It's universal, which means every new mom will get the same amount of money. "You pit people against each other when you draw that line in the sand and say, 'You don't need this, and you do,' " Shaefer says. It can also stigmatize families who get the aid, he says, as happened with traditional welfare...

So far, there's more than $43 million to keep the program going for three years. Funders include foundations, health insurance companies and the state of Michigan, which allocated a small part of its federal cash aid, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Money can buy more time for bonding with a baby

Alana Turner can't believe her luck with Flint's new cash benefits. "I was just shocked because of the timing of it all," she says.

Turner is due soon with her second child, a girl. She lives with her aunt and her 4-year-old son, Ace. After he was born, her car broke down and she was seriously cash-strapped, negotiating over bill payments. This time, she hopes she won't have to choose between basic needs.

"Like, I shouldn't have to think about choosing between are the lights going to be on or am I going to make sure the car brakes are good," she says...

But since she'll be getting an unexpected $7,500 over the next year, Turner has a new goal. With her first child, she was back on the job in less than six weeks. Now, she hopes she'll be able to slow down and spend more time with her daughter.

"I don't want to sacrifice the time with my newborn like I had to for my son, if I don't have to," she says."

-via NPR, March 12, 2024

[movingthisblogcelestialtarot11]

What are some placements someone may have that point to working in hospitality, travel, and tourism? I’m in this field so I’m very curious! Thank you ☺️

Cancer 10h, cancer moon—A lot of these natives gravitate towards traveling I’ve noticed. Their job may require lengthy times away from home! Someone I knew was a construction worker and traveled by the airport just to get work done. These natives feel comfortable working solo most of the time.

Libra rising/moon—Works with others and can be great at hospitality! Libras can be quite social as well and have a vast network of friends in their job. The type to travel and study abroad!

Taurus moon/Venus—May want to become a pharmacist, nurse, or doctor. Great at studying and teaching information to others. Takes their work seriously, and knows their field will pay off. They themselves may have had health issues and want to help others through theirs.

Saturn 6h, sun 6h, Venus 6h—Takes care of their health and motivates others to do the same. May become influential in social media for their food, gym progress. If not, their studies will take them far in hospitality and may go one to have a masters/PHD. Venus 6h is more likely to work with children. Venus 6h adores travel daily and wants to see different parts of their town/city. May drive around a lot! Sun 6h as well.

Saturn 6h may want to settle down in an area for a while to explore it rather than rushing. Known yo take their journeys slow and may even document it! Can become a vlogger and help to guide others around destinations because of their knowledge.

Moon-saturn asp— can make a native not settle down in one place for too long. Though this issue usually stems from trauma and not feeling safe at home most of the time. These natives can bounce around a lot. These aspects also make an individual adept at understanding patient needs, because they tap into patients instincts and their Saturn aspect can provide structure to patients who need it. More likely to become a social worker.

Sagittarius sun—These natives just have a natural curiosity for the world. They want to know what there is out there than what is around them currently. Thirst for adventure!

Jupiter 1h, moon 1h—Great emotional depth and empathy, able to connect with others with ease. Their ability to sense deeper energies helps them to connect to nature. Because of their need to be alone to recover, these natives can end up traveling a lot in their lifetime.

Leo sun—May love getting out and about. Roadtrips, and may love to take others for adventures too. I can also see Leos connecting with patients in need, specifically children to help them heal. May work in NICU departments with infants, become a pediatrician.

Virgo sun/moon—great with working with their health and may encourage others to do the same. May believe in healing with nature and is more likely to travel to decompress and relax. Tries to encourage holistic treatments! May become a doctor related to the bones, physical therapy. Might become a masseuse.

Moon 12h—can go one to become a doctor, more so in the psychology field but not limited! May be into acupuncture. Their work may require they work far away since the 12h rules distant lands. Learns to embrace solitude through their work.

Pisces—A lot of these natives become a doctor in the sense of spirituality. They may perform reiki to help others, be into astrology, tarot, the occult.

Gemini—Loves to travel and share their knowledge! Similar to 6h placements. They love to be open minded to learning new things including culture and history of the places they go. Their stories are fascinating.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Frank Bergman April 1, 2025

A one-year-old baby girl has tragically died suddenly after going into cardiac arrest within hours of receiving 12 “vaccines” at once.

The infant, Sa’Niya, was given six injections for 12 “vaccine” doses during a single wellness visit.

The nurse who administered the shots said Sa’Niya needed them to catch her up on vaccinations because she missed her 6-month appointment.

However, pediatricians warn that doubling up on vaccines is dangerous, despite the practice being alarmingly common.

Roughly 12 hours after Sa’Niya was given 12 “vaccine” doses at once, the baby girl died.

According to the baby’s mother, Shanticia Nelson, Sa’Niya received the injections on March 26 at about 4 p.m.

Sa’Niya, who had just turned 1 year old on March 11, was given the shots by a nurse at Golisano Children’s Hospital Pediatric Practice in Rochester, New York.

[leiascully]

X-Files OctoberFicFest Day 12: Home

TW: canon child death/murder

It was funny that Scully thought he was the cosmopolitan one. She’d been all over the world. He’d grown up in a small town before he’d gone to Oxford, or a series of big houses in small towns. He’d loved it, while Sam was there. Afterwards, it had felt lonely and constricting. The pickup baseball games had disbanded when he’d arrived, after. He wondered what the other families had known or imagined about the Mulders. Had their families been in danger, or had it been a fear of association?

He imagined Scully as a mother, with a little family full of über-Scullies. His brain sketched around a father figure for them. He couldn’t imagine a man at her side and him on her other side, still chattering about aliens. He wouldn’t be able to drag her across the country on a Sasquatch hunt if she had soccer practice and pediatrician appointments.

There were too many disposable children in their files these day. First the Eves, though they seemed more likely to dispose of others. Then the clone children, toiling on the farms in rural Canada, busy as bees. Now these infants, too strange to survive, born into a family trapped in a prison they’d built for themselves.

He had never hoped for a family or children of his own. Not since his sister had been taken. But there might be space in his heart for Scully’s. There was a thought there he couldn’t touch: it was too tender to consider. He’d told her his genetics passed muster, but he wasn’t sure his heart did. But he’d buy her children presents if he was welcome in her house. He imagined himself invited for dinner, a table full of kids, and Scully at the other end smiling at him through the candlelight. It ached a bit. He tried not to touch the thought, a bruise on his brain.

It was a fraught world to bring a child into, even a child with a chance of surviving it. Even a town like this held bloody secrets. Abductions happened on quiet residential streets; somewhere, over and over, Timmy fell down a well or got lost in a cave or drowned in the lake. Tragedies happened everywhere, for no reason.

The Peacock infant hadn’t deserved the short life it had endured, but at least that tragedy made sense. Its family had offered it a hopeless existence: a few moments of pain and fear and then release. There had been no future for that child. If he were the kind of person who prayed, he would have prayed for it. As it was, he just hoped it hadn’t suffered much.

Some part of him selfishly hoped Scully wouldn’t have children. Beyond his most selfish impulse of wanting their life not to change, he couldn’t endure the thought of seeing any child of hers in their files, or in the newspaper, or on a list of missing children. He would spare her that if he could.

He would spare her so much if he could. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the strength; he was the one who couldn’t stand her suffering. She’d gone through enough, and too much of it because of him.

He wondered if they looked like the Peacocks to their colleagues: insular, paranoid, unwilling to leave their territory. Like the Peacocks, they were obsessed with odd theories. Like the Peacocks, they armed themselves against threats. He hoped that was where the resemblance ended.

Back to the city. Back to civilized life. Back to locking their doors and ordering takeout after 7 p.m and the scream of sirens down the street. There were parts of urban life he loved. But he still kept the baseball, dropping it into his suitcase. Some memories were worth keeping.

[mariacallous]

Since its inception, in 2000, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which works with local governments to bring vaccines to low-income countries, has helped administer 1.9 billion vaccines and reached a billion children. Global vaccination work has nearly halved the global infant-mortality rate, saved more than a hundred and fifty million lives, prevented innumerable costly hospitalizations and long-term disabilities, and strengthened local health services in many remote places. “I can’t imagine a more successful, cost-effective public-health organization than the Gavi alliance,” Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine researcher at Texas Children’s Hospital, told me. “I mean, you had close to half a million kids dying of measles every year when Gavi was launched, and they got it down to less than fifty thousand deaths. And made similar gains with pertussis—which is whooping cough—diphtheria, tetanus, H. influenzae b meningitis, you name it.”

In the United States, we’re somewhat blinkered about what vaccination means to the other ninety-six per cent of people in the world. On Wednesday, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that the U.S. intends to withhold the amount that the Biden Administration had pledged to Gavi, 1.6 billion dollars. He claimed that Gavi had “ignored the science” about vaccine safety. He had already dismissed all seventeen members of the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, before saying that his hand-picked replacements would review the U.S. childhood-immunization schedule.

All this is to say that an enormous amount of energy has gone into grossly misleading “debates” about vaccine safety and effectiveness. The problem that led to Gavi’s formation, however, was not skepticism but scarcity. By the late nineties, relatively wealthier nations had childhood-vaccination rates of more than ninety per cent, and were seeing few cases of vaccine-preventable diseases. “But manufacturers in high-income countries were producing vaccines for high-income markets,” Violaine Mitchell, the recently retired director of global immunization efforts for the Gates Foundation, a founding partner and funder of Gavi, told me. “Low-income markets had really very little hope.”

Mitchell, who grew up in Kenya, started her career in agricultural development. While working on an animal-husbandry project in Cairo, she saw that many people had donkeys that were dying of tetanus. “I was, like, I grew up on a farm; tetanus is easy to prevent,” she said. Affordable, locally made tetanus vaccines were available in Egypt, though accessibility could still be an issue. But when she went into the households of the owners, she saw that infants were dying of neonatal tetanus, contracted from the razors that were used to cut their umbilical cords. This turned her career. She has worked with Gavi since its earliest days. “The idea behind Gavi was: Could we pool demand from developing countries so that the poorest countries in the world could then together negotiate with manufacturers?” This strategy was aimed at lowering prices and attracting more vaccine manufacturers at a time when many were closing down. Gavi wasn’t meant to cover all the costs of buying and distributing vaccines, but it would offer aid, loans, and technical advice. Gavi proposed funding the first five years of a vaccination program, and then the costs would gradually shift to the individual nations.

“It was pretty hard sledding in the beginning,” Mitchell said. Countries were hesitant to collaborate. “They were afraid there would be a loss of commitment. As one very skeptical manager told me, ‘Well, at least we’ll have five years of birth cohort protected against hepatitis-B cancers. At least we’ve done our piece.’ ” Mozambique was the first country to work with Gavi, followed by Ghana, Rwanda, and Kenya. “And then it kind of snowballed,” Mitchell said. “It was extraordinary. We went from single manufacturers to, now, fairly robust, competitive markets.” Prices have gone down, supply has increased, and countries have taken on more of the financial burden. India covers ninety-nine per cent of its vaccine costs. Nicaragua covers eighty-nine per cent. “We’ve had some close loan defaults, for sure, of countries that’ve really struggled with coups and other things,” Mitchell said. But no country has ever fully defaulted on their financing with Gavi.

When I spoke to Mitchell, she was in Nigeria on a goodbye tour, of sorts, shortly before retiring. Her colleague Greg Widmyer, who was there, too, would take over her role. Mitchell remembered visiting a vaccine clinic in Nigeria twelve years earlier. “There were no fridges, and no vaccines, and nobody had showed up,” she said. Even now, one in eight children under the age of five in Nigeria dies from vaccine-preventable diseases, but it used to be considerably worse. “Today, there were lots of mums, lots of people talking, lots of people coming for vaccination. It’s a very different world.”

Prior to the second Trump Administration, the U.S. typically contributed about thirteen per cent of Gavi’s budget. The United Kingdom, the largest sovereign donor to Gavi’s core programs, has cut its budget for overseas development by roughly half, to compensate for increases in defense spending, though it has said that aid groups such as Gavi, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, and the WHO are among its top priorities. On Wednesday, at a meeting in Brussels, Gavi’s donors—countries, foundations, individuals—made their pledges, totalling nine billion dollars for the next five years. This amount falls short of what is needed. Mitchell says she worries that if Gavi is not fully funded, “the options and vaccines that we’ve been able to make available to children and young women all over the world will not be the same.”

The U.S. may be doing more than simply failing to aid global vaccination efforts. The domestic stoking of anti-vaccine sentiment is itself infectious—a disease-carrying rat population on the ships exporting American culture. Hotez, the vaccine researcher, used to see the American anti-vax movement as its own thing, separate from the vaccine skepticism of other countries, which is sometimes tied to a distrust of government that stems from colonial histories, civil wars, and political instability. But he now believes that the U.S. anti-vax movement, with its wellness-influencer and health-freedom themes, has become an export, threatening global vaccine goals. “You’re starting to see the same garbage that’s put out on Fox News pop up on the African continent,” he said. Latin America, which had very high vaccination rates, has also changed. Hotez said that it used to be the case that, when he would give a presentation in a Latin American country, he would start off by congratulating the pediatricians on holding the line and preventing contamination from the U.S. anti-vaccine movement. “I see that beginning to falter also,” he said. “Certainly, with Brazil, it happened with Bolsonaro.” Jair Bolsonaro, as President of Brazil, attempted to push legislation that would require a prescription for standard childhood vaccinations. He also speculated that COVID vaccines could cause AIDS. In his tenure, childhood-vaccination rates fell from eighty-five per cent to less than seventy per cent.

Here at home, if vaccination rates drop substantially, it won’t be because we can’t afford them but because people have turned against them. In that case, the country could see something that resembles the two and a half decades of Gavi run in reverse. A recent study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, devised forecasts for the next twenty-five years if vaccination rates decline by various rates. A ten-per-cent drop in measles vaccination, for example, would lead to some eleven million additional cases.

A number of moves—some that have already happened and some that are anticipated—could lead to vaccination rates falling by much more than ten per cent. “There are a lot of ways, without explicitly saying the C.D.C. is anti-vax now, that the apparatus of government can be used in subtle ways to reduce vaccination rates,” Jonathan Berman, the author of “Anti-vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement,” told me. David Geier, a prominent anti-vaxxer who was disciplined by the Maryland State Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license, has reportedly been appointed by Kennedy to lead a study looking for a link between autism and vaccines. This could lead to the F.D.A. revoking the authorization of proven, safe vaccines. Or the C.D.C. might continue to incrementally diminish its endorsement of COVID vaccines, as it did recently when it decided to no longer recommend them for pregnant women and healthy children. Less money could be put into the campaigns that remind people to get flu shots. The C.D.C. could stop recommending a vaccine, which could lead insurers not to cover it and people to lose confidence in it. “And I can imagine a situation where our stockpiles of polio vaccine are expiring, and the decision has to be made: do we make more?” Berman said. There is precedent here. In May, the government cancelled a seven-hundred-and-sixty-six-million-dollar contract with Moderna for late-stage work on an avian-influenza vaccine for humans, even as the disease has been turning up in dairy workers.

The replacements that have been named to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices include Robert W. Malone, who has promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for the treatment of COVID, and James Pagano, an emergency-medicine physician who has written two novels but appears to have published virtually nothing on vaccines. The committee will soon be voting on recommendations for flu and RSV vaccines for the upcoming winter and will continue to get to vote on access to and recommendations for both new and existing vaccines.

Nathan Lo, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University and one of the JAMA paper’s authors, told me, “A lot of the motivation for this study was making sure that evidence was available ahead of any serious considerations for reëvaluating the childhood-vaccination schedule.” The study predicts that, if routine childhood vaccinations are halved, the U.S. can expect to see more than sixty-five million cases of preventable diseases in the next twenty-five years, with four million of those being polio—cases that will likely cluster in certain parts of the country, such as areas that have higher anti-vaccine sentiment or larger populations, or that are hubs of travel. “The funny thing, or maybe the sad thing, is that when we first thought of doing this paper, we thought, Oh, this is really timely. However, it takes time to design a study, to develop models, to validate findings,” Lo said. “We generated the first set of our main results right around Christmas, and had identified a potential hot spot for measles in Texas, and I was thinking, It’s my home state, that’s interesting.” He went on, “And then, a month later, this massive outbreak started.” By early March, Texas had a hundred and fifty-nine cases of measles, more than a hundred of them in Gaines County, home to a Mennonite community with many unvaccinated children. There have since been outbreaks in dozens of states and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Ironically, it’s likely that some of the skepticism around vaccines, in the U.S. and elsewhere, comes from their efficacy, their almost magical-seeming eradication of diseases that were once familiar terrors. “Most people have never seen measles, whooping cough, or polio. The immediacy of those devastating diseases is hard for people to imagine now,” Robert Hopkins, the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told me. “What I don’t want to see return is the days of my childhood, when it was not unusual to lose a friend to one of these diseases.”

Memories are short, even in countries with recent experience. Widmyer, the new director of global immunization efforts for the Gates Foundation, speaking from Nigeria, mentioned the “meningitis belt that ran right through where we are now.” A geographic swath of sub-Saharan Africa that extends from Senegal to Ethiopia used to have an outbreak every five to twelve years of a deadly meningitis that disproportionately affected children. “People operated in complete and utter fear,” Widmyer said. “They would lock down whole villages when these outbreaks came back.” Efforts coördinated in part by Gavi led to the creation of an inexpensive vaccine that has effectively eliminated a strain of meningitis. “Folks forget that a little bit,” Widmyer said. Misinformation about COVID is widespread in Nigeria, and, although vaccination rates over all are much improved, cities tend to be more vaccinated than rural areas. “What was once a supply-side problem can become a demand-side problem when diseases become less of a threat,” he said.

From an early age, Hotez was set on formulating remedies for tropical diseases, which were often neglected, because they were rare in wealthy countries. A vaccine for hookworm anemia that he started work on forty years ago was recently shown in clinical trials to provide high levels of protection. Much of his work involves investigating methods of making vaccines that are affordable in low- and middle-income countries. A team that he led with Maria Elena Bottazzi at the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development produced an inexpensive, patent-free COVID vaccine that has reached a hundred million people in India and Indonesia. “Yeast is one of the most common technologies available, so when the COVID-19 sequence was made available, we were able to use that technology to make a low-cost vaccine,” Hotez said. The work was mostly funded by private donors in Texas.

Several years earlier, Hotez had received a call from the National Institutes of Health, asking him to speak with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “It was Tony Fauci and Francis Collins,” Hotez said. “The thinking was, You’re a vaccine scientist and you’re a pediatrician—you can explain why vaccines don’t cause autism.” Hotez and Kennedy had a series of long phone conversations and e-mail exchanges. “Those were not productive discussions, in that they did not convince Mr. Kennedy,” Hotez said. “But they helped me understand the psychology of the anti-vaccine movement, and led to my writing a book called ‘Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.’ ” Rachel is one of Hotez’s four adult children.

As Hotez became a favored enemy of anti-vaccine groups, he was stalked and harassed; he even received death threats. “But I also found it fascinating,” he told me. He sees the current anti-vax movement in the U.S. as a convergence of the distinctly American libertarian right-wing with parts of the wellness and influencer industry, “which is based on buying whatever you can in bulk, which are usually low-cost antiparasitic drugs like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, then jacking up the price, repackaging it, and selling it with telehealth visits for thousands of dollars. That’s the CliffsNotes version.” He began to feel that countering anti-vaccine activism was maybe as important as the vaccines he was formulating.

What we think makes us healthy has at times included radium-infused water, milk transfusions, and “snake-oil” made of turpentine, red pepper, and beef fat; what we think makes us sick has included the curses of witches. Vaccine developers can profit from their products, but designing and testing a vaccine is a lot more work than selling a plant flavonol called quercetin as a treatment for COVID, and supplements are not subject to the same kind of regulatory oversight as drugs. It’s not surprising that Joseph Mercola, who made millions selling supplements, also spent millions funding the powerful anti-vaccine group the National Vaccine Information Center. The Trump meme coin was launched three days before Trump’s Inauguration; Mehmet Oz, now the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made his name promoting “miracle” supplements for which he issued health claims that were often unsupported by scientific evidence. Showboat sales pitches and the holding of a federal office is a popular combo, and, in the realm of public health, a deadly one.

[trans-axolotl]

ID: [A 1997 flyer made by Riki Anne Wilchins that reads: Jocelyn Elders supports Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM). Hermaphrodite; someone whose genitals are not clearly male or female. US Hospitals genitally cut 8 intersexed kids every day just so their genitals will look "normal." Most will lose genital sensation. Many are cut so they won't "become lesbians." Jocelyn Elders supports this practice! Did you know: The vast majority of children diagnosed as intersexed by American doctors and genitally cut are otherwise unremarkable infants who simply have clitorises more than 3/8” long. Many are genitally cut in the mistaken belief that otherwise they may grow up to be masculinized, lesbian women or have difficulty functioning as “normal, heterosexual adults” later in life. Did you know: According to noted Brown University medical researcher Dr. Anne Fausto­ Sterling, 2,000 intersex infants are genitally cut for cosmetic reasons in US hospitals annually: that’s 8 infants from 3 weeks to 3 years old cut every working day. Yet the American Academy of Pediatricians’ own statement on IGM says these infants are genitally cut to minimize “emotional, cognitive, and body image” problems and not for any medical reason. Did you know: Jocelyn Elders on intersexed infants and “correcting” queer genitals: "…just take out everything and make a good vaginal pouch and the child can function very well as a female." "I always told my students, 'I can make a good female, but it's very hard to make a male.'" Ever hear of informed consent? Dr. Elders refuses to even meet with the intersexed community or IGM survivors. Intersex kids need counseling, not cutting! Hey Dr. Elders: Get Your Scalpels Off our Bodies! We're not quiet. We're not well behaved. And we're not going away. Hermaphrodites with attitude.]

Although it can be very upsetting to see the way that interphobia and medical abuse existed in incredibly similar ways 30 years ago, this protest flyer and associated newsletter showcase the incredible history of intersex and trans solidarity between Transexual Menace and Hermaphrodites with attitude. This newsletter includes multiple updates on trans and intersex news, including protests, discrimination, and media representation.

"Herm-Protest Jocelyn Elders at Lesbian Event.

Washington, DC: 20 Sep 97. The activist groups Hermaphrodites with Attitude (HWA) and Transexual Menace today protested Dr. Jocelyn Elders' keynote address to a Mautner Lesbians With Cancer Project fundraiser, held in the Washington Hilton. Dr. Elders, a former US Surgeon General, is an outspoken advocate of Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), a cosmetic surgery performed on the genitals of intersexed infants so they will look like "normal" males and females.

Eight demonstrators carried banners saying "Dr. Elders: Keep Your Scalpels OFF Our Bodies" and "Intersex Kids Need Counseling NOT Cutting", and distributed IGM leaflets to attendees as they arrived for the $100-a-plate dinner. Several attendees expressed shock and dismay upon learning of Dr. Elders' position, noting that she is generally considered a supporter of lesbian and feminist causes, and enlightened on most matters of adolescent sexuality. However, the flier noted that on "correcting" queer genitals, Dr. Elders has written: "…just take out everything and make a good vaginal pouch and the child can function very well as a female," and "I always told my students, I can make a good female, but it's very hard to make a male."

"We're not protesting the Mautner Project," explained HWA founder, Cheryl Chase, "we're calling attention to Dr. Elders' support of IGM and her continued refusal to meet with us on an issue that affects our lives. One reason IGM is performed is the fear that girls born with clitorises considered ‘too large’ will grow up to be masculine or lesbian. We want to bring awareness to the Lesbian and Gay community that IGM is a queer issue."

Although intersexuality was once considered rare, according to noted Brown University medical researcher Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, about 8 intersex children are genitally cut in US hospitals every working day for cosmetic reasons. Stated Chase, "We will continue to seek a meeting with Dr. Elders, and anticipate that once she takes IGM seriously, she will support out position."

Following the demonstration, HWA and the Menace donated a $100 to the Mautner Project in the name of intersexed infants."

-In Your Face No. 5, Spring 1998.

[ohsoromanov]

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia in Livadia, Crimea.

"I would like to draw a portrait of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as she was in those bright days, before grief and trials befell our dear Homeland.  She was tall, with thick golden hair that fell to her knees, and, like a little girl, she was constantly blushing with shyness; her eyes, huge and deep, brightened up as she talked and laughed. At home, she was given the nickname "Sunny" — the name that the Sovereign always called her.  From the very first days of our acquaintance, I became deeply attached to the Empress: love and affection for her remained for the rest of my life. I remember our first heartfelt conversations by the piano, sometimes lasting until bedtime. I recall how, little by little, she opened her soul to me, telling me how from the first days of her arrival in Russia, she felt that she was not loved. This was doubly difficult for her, as she had married the Tsar only because she loved him, and in loving the Tsar, she hoped that their mutual happiness would bring the hearts of their subjects closer to them. My grandmother Tolstaya told me a story passed on to her by her relative, Baroness Anna Karlovna Pilar, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Maria Alexandrovna. During the Empress's visit to Darmstadt in the 1870s, Princess Alice of Hesse brought all her children to show her, carrying in her arms the little Princess Alice (the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). Empress Maria Alexandrovna, turning to Baroness Pilar, said, pointing to the little Princess Alice: "Baisez lui la main, elle sera votre future Impératrice" [Kiss her hand, she will be your future Empress]. The Empress loved to visit the sick — she was a born nurse of mercy; she brought cheerfulness and moral support to the sick <...> In the infirmary, she went round the wounded officers, played checkers with them, drank tea, and spoke to them with maternal tenderness, not at all shy, and at those moments it seemed strange to me that she was found cold and unfriendly. With infinite gratitude and respect, the sick and wounded surrounded her, each trying to be closer to her. All those who suffered were close to her heart, and she gave her all to comfort a person in a moment of grief. I have witnessed hundreds of times when the Empress, forgetting her own ailments, went to see the sick, the dying, or those who had just lost dear ones; and then the Empress became herself, a gentle, affectionate mother. And those who knew her in moments of despair and grief will never forget her. Incorruptibly honest and direct, she could not stand lies; neither flattery nor deceit could buy her off.  Wanting to instill the knowledge and skill of proper infant care, the Empress founded a "Nanny School"in Tsarskoye Selo at her own expense. At the head of this institution was a pediatrician, Dr. Rauchfus. There was a 50-bed orphanage attached to the school. There, she also founded a disabled home for 200 disabled soldiers of the Japanese War at her own expense. Handicapped people were trained in all sorts of crafts, for which purpose there were huge workshops attached to the house. Near the disabled house built in Tsarskoye Selo Park, the Empress arranged a whole colony of small houses in one room with a kitchen and vegetable gardens for family invalids.  In addition to the institutions I mentioned, the Empress founded a folk art school in St. Petersburg, where girls from all over Russia came to learn handicrafts. Returning to their villages, they became local instructors. These girls worked at the school with great passion. The Empress was particularly interested in handicrafts; she spent hours with the headmistress selecting patterns, drawings, coordinating colors, and so on.One of these girls taught my legless invalids carpet weaving. The school was set up perfectly and had a huge future." - Anna Vyrubova (Taneeva) - Pages of My Life

[the1975attheirverybest]

10 things Matty does as a dad

A/n: the brain rot will not stop so….

Warnings: none

————

Freak out at the hospital when the nurse hands him his newborn baby for the first time. “Oh gosh what if I drop her.” “Oh she’s so small. How can a person be so small.” “hi little one. I’m your daddy it’s so good to meet you.” “I love you already.”

Gets up every single time the baby does. Even though he and the wife have a schedule and it hinges upon one of them being awake and alert when the other isn’t. So it defeats the purpose for him to wake up every time but he insists he’d just feel guilty if he kept sleeping while his wife and child are awake at night.

Takes a year off from work. No producing. No writing for other artists. No 1975 stuff. He might scribble stuff down or try ideas if something comes to him. But he’s not like actively trying to make a record at all. So, he stays with the baby at home all day when the missus gets back to work and gets really into baby nutrition. Reading books on obscure health benefits of rare oils and extracts. Tries to buy a bunch of them online.

Oh the online shopping. When it’s late at night and he’s rocking the baby back to sleep and he’s kinda sleep deprived, he makes questionable decisions. Buys every toy that markets itself as “educational.” Or important to kids cognitive development or whatever. His missus has to institute a rule where they need to donate 2 old toys for each new toy they purchase.

The pediatrician tells him that talking and reading to the baby is important in order to make sure they acquire the strongest vocabulary by age 3. So he starts to read to her regularly. First, it’s children’s books. But then it progresses to whatever he can find around the house. Grocery lists, the blender manual, song lyrics, emails. He even does different voices and sound effects to keep things interesting.

He asks his baby girl for her input on music even before she’s old enough to understand what she’s really saying. “Come here, daddy wants to show you something. What do you think? You like it?”

Let’s her design tour posters/ album cover/ merch graphics

Establishes a regular dad-daughter date. Even when she’s an infant. A whole day of just the two of them. It starts out as just him needing to prove to himself that he could take care of her all day without asking for help from anyone. But he just keeps doing it as time goes by. It becomes a bonding experience. As she grows up, they start to use this time to talk about school, what she’s into, her friends, etc.

Cries when she’s sick. The missus will be like “matty, children get the sniffles sometimes. She’ll be okay. This is fine. Necessary even! For her immune system.” But he’s just like “she’s so miserable and can hardly breathe poor girl.” He’s practically a mess when she gets the chickenpox. All his memories of getting it or watching his brother get it mean nothing to him. He acts as if his kid is the first and last one to ever get sick on parent earth.

He watches YouTube tutorials to learn to do various hair styles just to impress her by offering her options when she asks him to help her do her hair for school in the morning.

[haggishlyhagging]

For heterosexual couples, procreation and, more specifically, motherhood represent the last realm where, even among progressives, the "Nature" argument, which we have learned to distrust in almost every other circumstance, still calls the shots. We know that, down the centuries, the most bizarre— and most oppressive —theories have been justified by the "obvious and unquestionable" proof apparently furnished by "Nature." For example, in 1879, Gustave Le Bon confirmed that "The brains of many women are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the more developed brains of men. This inferiority is so evident that no one could gainsay it for a moment: only the degree of difference is worth any discussion." With time, the absurdity of this kind of thinking has become abundantly clear. These days, we avoid attributing any particular disposition or specific behavior to any physical feature. In progressive circles, for example, no one will tell gay and lesbian people that their sexual practices are problematic, that they are attracted to the wrong people and that their organs haven't been designed for use in this way; no one would ever venture: "Excuse me, but did you misread the manual? Nature actually says . . . ." And yet, as soon as were on the topic of women and babies, it's a free-for-all: the result is a carnival of biological Freudian banana skins, if I may put it this way. Suddenly you find yourself surrounded by fervent advocates of the very narrowest biological determinism.

They have a uterus: this is the truly irrefutable proof that women ought to have children, right? We appear not to have advanced an inch since the eighteenth century, when the entry for "Femme" ("Woman") in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedia comprised a description of a woman's physical appearance and the conclusion that "all these facts demonstrate that the purpose of women is to have children and to feed them." We continue to believe unshakeably that women are programmed to want to be mothers. In earlier times, this was put down to the independent volition of their uterus, a "formidable animal," "possessed with the desire to create children," "lively, resistant to reason, working in the interests of fearsome desires to dominate over all." The self-motivating womb has now relinquished its place in the collective imagination to that mysterious organ known as the "biological clock," which no X-ray has yet managed to locate, yet whose relentless ticking is easily detected by putting your ear to the belly of any woman between thirty-five and forty. "We are used to thinking about metaphors like 'the biological clock' as if they were not metaphors at all, but simply neutral descriptions of facts about the human body," observes essayist Moira Weigel. The term "biological clock" was first used to refer to women's fertility in 1978, in a Washington Post article titled "The Clock is Ticking for the Career Woman." In other words, this expression was an early harbinger of the imminent anti-feminist backlash, and its dazzlingly successful integration into the female anatomy makes it a unique phenomenon in the history of evolution—it would have given Darwin pause for thought. Since women's bodies give them the option of carrying a child, of course Nature would prefer that women also change the resulting infant's nappies, once born, that they attend all meetings with pediatricians and, while we're on the subject, that they mop the kitchen floor, do the washing-up and remember to buy loo roll for the next twenty-five years. This is known as "maternal instinct." Yes, Nature orders precisely this, and not, for example, that, in order to thank women for taking on the major task required for perpetuation of the species, society do its best to compensate them for the inconveniences they thereby suffer; nothing of the sort. If you thought that might make sense, you haven't really understood Nature.

-Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women are Still on Trial

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Meg Tirrell, Brenda Goodman, and Jen Christensen at CNN:

At the first meeting of a controversial new group of vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the committee announced new plans to study established vaccine guidelines. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will create new work groups to study the cumulative effects of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedules, the hepatitis B vaccine dose given at birth and the combination measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox vaccine, new chair Dr. Martin Kulldorff announced at Wednesday’s meeting in Atlanta. It was the first time the new group of seven outside CDC vaccine advisers has convened since US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed the previous panel of 17 experts this month, claiming that they had conflicts of interest. He appointed a new group of eight members two days later; one withdrew during the financial holdings review, leaving seven to review the nation’s vaccine recommendations. Public health experts were concerned about both the unprecedented dismissal of the previous committee and the background and positions of some of the new advisers; two have served as expert witnesses against vaccines in trials, and another has suggested, against evidence, that Covid-19 vaccines contributed to the deaths of young people and should be removed from the market. Kennedy, who helmed the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense before becoming HHS secretary, has suggested that childhood vaccines have been inadequately studied, something pediatricians and infectious disease experts say is not the case. ACIP’s recommendations historically have held significant sway; they influence both insurance coverage and state policies around vaccination.

Kulldorff said the new work group on the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedules will review “interaction effects between different vaccines, cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients and the relative timing of different vaccines.” Each time a vaccine is added to the schedule, its interaction with other vaccines is reviewed, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of an outside vaccine advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration.

Hepatitis B and measles

A second new work group will look at vaccines that haven’t been reviewed in more than seven years, Kulldorff said, including whether the hepatitis B vaccine should be universally recommended for newborns. “Unless the mother is hepatitis B-positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use,” Kulldorff said. The CDC says that “universal HepB vaccination of all infants beginning at birth provides a critical safeguard and prevents infection among infants born to [hepatitis B]-positive mothers not identified prenatally.” “Scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the safety of hepatitis B vaccines,” the agency says.

[...] A third new work group will look at vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox, or varicella, Kulldorff said, noting that “vaccines are important for combating measles for the first dose at age 12 to 15 months.” The vaccine is available as a combination of all four, or as two shots with the one protecting against varicella given separately. There is a well-understood higher risk of febrile seizures when the four-vaccine combination is given to children between ages 1 and 2; giving the varicella vaccine separately from the MMR vaccine avoids this increased risk, which the CDC points out is “very low for both options.”

The RFK Jr.-run ACIP committee will be open season for anti-vaxxer extremism with their vaccination schedule recommendations.

[teachingrounds]

Check out this short American Academy of Pediatrics video with helpful measles prevention tips to keep babies safe from the measles virus. Infants under 12 months don't usually get the vaccine, but some can. If they do, they should be re-vaccinated at 12-15 months, when their immune system is mature enough for the vaccine to "take."

[feathers-and-song]

A Tale of Two Sinners

(This one hurt the most to write. This is a warning.)

When he first laid eyes upon it, he was originally going to kill it. The child was burned, having been surrounded by boiling embryonic fluid within its egg. But, when he held the infant in his arms, and through the influence of a few doctors, had decided to let it live.

Dan Feng never thought he’d be grateful for going back on his decision. As he sat in a barely lit room, his transparent tail thumping against the floor, he sighed and rubbed his temple. That child was crying again.

It seemed to only calm when he was around.

Raising from his seat, he walked over to the nursery, wincing as the cries got louder. Opening the door with a heave, he walked over to the stressed nurse, took the baby into his arms, and rocked it back and forth.

“Kai” was its name, as no one had taken it under their wings. Once it was back to sleep, he decided it was best if the baby stayed by his side.

Upon returning to his room with the melting candles, he continued his work. His arms still rocked the child. The amber light reflected off the child’s face, brightening the unusual feathers that started to grow from its scalp.

When the High Elder gave Kai a glance, he stopped everything. For the first time since the child’s hatching, he did not see Kai as a creature. Instead, he saw the innocence of an infant. A child barely even able to eat without assistance. A child that had attached itself to him.

Dan Feng was unsure as to whether he was ready for fatherhood.

But as Kai grew older, he didn’t exhibit any issues apart from his delayed ability to speak. His features started to grow in abnormal ways. His eyes were very large, accompanied by the pupils. Everyone said he looked like he was a cat.

The feathers coated his entire head, causing Dan Feng to develop some great concern. The snaggletooth and tail feathers had also contributed, and the High Elder started to question whether Kai was a Vidyadhara at all. But he shouldn’t let these attributes affect how he sees the kid.

But his movements! Kai was a loud infant, but the most silent toddler ever. He didn’t speak nor make any noise when he walked. Important meetings with the other elders suddenly had to have more than one guard in order to keep Kai from walking in on them without notice.

Which is how he got the bell attached to his belt….which he quickly figured out how to untie.

Dan Feng soon learned that Kai was being avoided when the toddler started coming to him when most other kids would play together. He had also exhibited these behaviors at night when the only thing illuminating the beach was the bright moonlight.

On one of these nights, he watched as Kai, curled up in his arms, reached out for one of the faint lotus lights. Dan Feng reached out for the light that glowed, dimmed, and lit back up, bringing it closer to the child. The light reflected in his large pupils until his eyes closed.

That night, he kept Kai curled within his tail, snuggled in a blanket with a pillow. Once more in the light of candle fire, he worked at his desk. This time, to create a glowing lotus made of fabric. Perfect for a young child. From then on, Kai slept through the whole night, never waking to seek out Dan Feng.

Gradually, Kai managed to speak normally and even develop some friends. He only had two so far, another Vidyadhara girl named Shiwen and a foxian child named Shufen, daughter to a well known doctor (and Kai’s pediatrician).

And Dan Feng started to see how the boy he practically raised when no one else wanted to was so greatly disliked by others around him. He started to hear the whispers that the other Vidyadhara started to say to the children.

“Stay away from that one! And his friends too. You could get sick.”

So, he started to look deeper. Book after book, he searched for what sort of condition Kai could have. A curse perhaps. What made him so different?

And as he was looking for answers, he didn’t realize how much Kai was feeling with such rumors circulating. Didn’t see that his absence had left a hole inside his son. Didn’t see that his separation had driven Kai apart from him.

Dan Feng, in moments of resurfacing from the pool of ideas, theories, and conspiracies, saw how Kai had surrounded himself with more and more people. He started to realize that his son had really grown up and started to drift away.

He would give Kai embraces, tell him how proud he was, and see the smile on his son’s face. But deep down, he knew that hole he left in Kai’s chest couldn’t be filled with occasional words. So he promised Kai that as soon as he figured out what he was looking for, he’d spend as much time with him as possible.

Dan Feng knew that rift had already formed, that his face had become a mere mess in the mirror to his son. That he had ruined things already. Too caught up with his work to realize Kai didn’t want answers to what he was, he just wanted to be seen as who he was. The High Elder didn’t realize this until the day he found his answer, staring up at his wall of papers ripped and strung together.

He wished he could have told Kai the truth. Told him why he had spent so many years looking and looking, why he neglected his child to the point that his son no longer found comfort in his home.

Dan Feng sat in the cold and damp shackling prison, back turned to the bars. He had done what he needed to do, and faced retribution because of it.

The pounding against the bars and the cries soon colored the world blue. He spun around to see his son gripping the bars tightly, tears cascading down his cheeks. What broke Dan Feng’s heart the most was seeing Kai’s arm in a sling.

He had let his son get hurt. He had let his son believe he was a criminal. He had let Kai face the worst of life without even being there for him through any of it.

He had hurt his son.

When the bars lifted, the first thing he did was bring Kai in for a final embrace. Kai never really cried; only ever silently shed a tear or shed his frustrations in such ways. Now, he wailed. Wailed like when he was an infant…and Dan Feng held him exactly like how he did back then.

“Scary when it’s dark, isn’t it?” the Cloud Knight said.

Dan Heng, still young and fearful, nodded. In the shackling prison, the moon barely even shone. So he looked to the Cloud Knight. He had strange hair and a tail not unlike a foxian’s, except with feathers like a peacock.

The Captain turned to look at him, holding a glowing object in his hand. A small felt lotus was placed within the bars of his cell. It pulsed with a light glow, beckoning Dan Heng forward.

“Take it,” the Cloud Knight urged. “If anyone tries to take it away, tell them I gave it to you. They don’t dare question me.”

“Then why don’t you tell them to release me?” Dan Heng asked.

The Cloud Knight pressed his lips tight against each other. He couldn’t give an answer.

Dan Heng approached the Starskiff, heading for a far away system. Now in exile from the Xianzhou, he was off to somewhere he could start anew. Before he could take a step on the Starskiff, a hand stopped him from entering.

Turning around, he was met with the odd looking Cloud Knight who had met him many times in the shackling prison. He held out a spear, one he could vaguely remember from his previous incarnation’s lifetime.

“You should take this. Might come in handy.”

Scalegorge Waterscape had finally risen from the depths. Kai had taken some time off from work in the Cloud Knights to do some investigations. His shoulder brace was uncomfortable, but he had to grin and bear it for now.

Digging through his old home, he tried not to mourn the loss of the books he read as a child or go tight throat at the dilapidated furniture which his father once sat at. Even though he had searched long and thorough, all that turned up was mush and ruined papers.

All of Dan Feng’s works, theories, and conspiracies were destroyed. What remained was nothing more than a simple folding screen, waterworn painted planks, and frayed string.