• Leaving aside the evident ignorance (?idiocy) implicit in T***’s comments when presenting his executive order on immunizations (e.g. “bottle of soda”, “gallons”, “possibility they’re quite lethal”, “nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing”, “72 shots”, etc.), there was no discussion of any cost/benefit analysis.  Robert Shpiner MD does a good job explaining in his Medpage Today perspective Trump’s Vaccine Order Will Show Up in My ICU. Some excerpts:

“The order recommends that childhood vaccines be given at separate visits. The president was explicit at the signing: “at 1 year, you should have five separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day.” It also says the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine should be split into separate shots for each disease, even though no such versions are licensed in the U.S. The order also reduces the number of universally recommended childhood vaccines, placing hepatitis A and B vaccines, meningococcal B and ACWY vaccines into the high-risk only category, and moving flu and COVID shots to shared decision-making.”

The costs:

“This is arithmetic any of us can run — and a calculation the government should have run. Based on the existing schedule, U.S. children need roughly 25 injectionsopens in a new tab or window by age 6 (not including annual flu shots), delivered today across seven visits or so. One at a time, they would need 25 individual visits. That would mean nearly four times the time spent traveling to and enduring doctor’s visits; four times the co-pays that too many families already can’t afford; four times the complaints from the child who fears needles. More visits would mean more missed visits. Hours for each visit — between travel, time in the pediatric waiting room, and the visit itself — are hours of pay that would not appear in a parent’s paycheck.

None of this appears in the order. Sections 1 through 5 say nothing about cost, Medicaid, or resources, and the supplementary White House fact sheet is similarly silent.”

Of course, right now it’s impossible to accurately compute the additional costs of controlling future outbreaks related to a decline in vaccine-induced herd immunity, or medical care for the many possible delayed medical issues related to decreased immunizations (liver failure from congenitally acquired Hepatitis B, brain damage or death due to meningococcal meningitis, congenital rubella syndrome, increased pediatric admissions for influenza and COVID, etc., etc.).

The benefits: The only one cited was fewer shots in one pediatric visit — which of course will likely result in increased costs rather than any benefit.

• Anthony Ha hosts a good interview with Jill Lepore in TechCrunch discussing her upcoming book The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. Hint: she’s not a fan of that construct.  I’m always a fan of Dr. Lepore, and I look forward to her book.

• Alan Taylor has a wonderful photo essay in the Atlantic on the construction of what will be the world’s largest fusion reactor – ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France. It’s a fantastically complicated construction challenge.

ITER collaboration Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States will share in the cost of project construction, operation and decommissioning, and also share in the experimental results and any intellectual property generated by the project. Europe is responsible for the largest portion of construction costs (45.6 percent); the remainder is shared equally by China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States (9.1 percent each).

The target date for completion with plasma generation is 2033.

• This was a fun read from the NYT on how some farmers are integrating machine learning – From Cow-Milking Robots to Weed-Zapping Lasers, Farmers Are Embracing A.I.

• Caveat emptor. From Matt Levine’s excellent Money Stuff, on Polymarket bots:

“Anyway Bloomberg’s Carolyn Silverman, Nathaniel Popper and Marie Patino report:

Over 100,000 accounts lost at least $1,000 on Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of every wallet active since the beginning of 2025. That is almost twice the number that made at least that much.

Among the winners, a majority of the profits were raked in by a tiny slice of what look to be automated bots, based on the Polymarket trade records compiled by the data firm Dune. Everyone else, in aggregate, lost $131 million. …

While prediction markets have been described as peer-to-peer, the Polymarket records suggest the role of the sportsbook is now largely being played by the sort of automated, high-frequency traders that have long dominated other financial markets. The most active accounts on the site were a small proportion of wallets, but accounted for most of the trading volume.“

• Thomas Edsall has it right in his NYT guest essay: titled “Easily the Worst President in U.S. History”:
“The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.” Worth the read.

• A nice essay from Charlie Warzel, writing in The Atlantic – “An Incredibly Weird Time to Be Alive.”  A snippet: “The world witnessed the best and worst of humanity in a single week.”

• The live video feed from the Artemis II mission: https://www.youtube.com/live/6RwfNBtepa4

NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft’s window on April 2, 2026, after completing the translunar injection burn:

• More worthwhile reading:

First, from the NY Times Editorial Board, Trump Is Hiding the Truth About the War in Iran:

“There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat — to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, especially to prevent it from menacing its neighbors and, above all, from developing a nuclear weapon. We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.

Mr. Trump is not making it. Instead, he has lied about the reasons for the war and about its progress, in an apparent attempt to disguise his poor planning and the war’s questionable basis.”

And also from the Times, a most excellent essay from Phil Klay: Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran. It’s definitely worth reading.

• I highly recommend Jamelle Bouie’s latest NYT opinion piece – Is There Method to Trump’s Madness? Excerpt:

“So, again, there is no method to this particular madness. There is no method at all. What there is, instead, is a man with a fourth-rate intellect and a fifth-rate temperament who treats reality as a television show for which he is the cloistered, pampered star. But the world actually exists. Real lives are at stake. And his actions have weight that cannot be easily moved.”