Amish World's Healthiest Children

[Josh]

I don't trust that website very much.

And I say this as someone who, generally speaking, avoids vaccines for religious reasons.

It was passed on to me, I honestly believe it over Fauci.

I trust neither that website nor Fauci.

[Ken]

That's not an actual study. That's just more anti-vax nonsense from this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch

And they didn't do any sort of study. They just made stuff up. These are the same folks that were talking about how vaccines caused people to be magnetized. Had they actually done a study they would have found that COVID death rates in areas with high Amish populations were actually higher than national averages, not lower.

Do you have a link to that study that death rates among Amish were higher?

https://kirschsubstack.com/p/my-bio

https://spectrum.ieee.org/optical-mouse ... -found-one

That man is busy!!

I'm not aware that anyone collected actual death rates among the Amish specifically. What I wrote was that areas with high Amish populations had higher COVID death rates. As far as I know, the two counties in America with the highest percentages of Amish and other CA groups are Holmes OH, and Mifflin PA. This is how they did for the entire course of the pandemic:

Total US: 352 deaths per 100,000
Ohio 360 deaths per 100,000
PA 396 deaths per 100,000
Holmes: 434 deaths per 100,000
Mifflin: 659 deaths per 100,000

[Valerie]

That's not an actual study. That's just more anti-vax nonsense from this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch

And they didn't do any sort of study. They just made stuff up. These are the same folks that were talking about how vaccines caused people to be magnetized. Had they actually done a study they would have found that COVID death rates in areas with high Amish populations were actually higher than national averages, not lower.

Do you have a link to that study that death rates among Amish were higher?

https://kirschsubstack.com/p/my-bio

https://spectrum.ieee.org/optical-mouse ... -found-one

That man is busy!!

I'm not aware that anyone collected actual death rates among the Amish specifically. What I wrote was that areas with high Amish populations had higher COVID death rates. As far as I know, the two counties in America with the highest percentages of Amish and other CA groups are Holmes OH, and Mifflin PA. This is how they did for the entire course of the pandemic:

Total US: 352 deaths per 100,000
Ohio 360 deaths per 100,000
PA 396 deaths per 100,000
Holmes: 434 deaths per 100,000
Mifflin: 659 deaths per 100,000

Pretty amazing really, since it is true they followed none of the mandates which is why we went weekly to Holmes for a sense of normalcy.

[Ken]

Do you have a link to that study that death rates among Amish were higher?

https://kirschsubstack.com/p/my-bio

https://spectrum.ieee.org/optical-mouse ... -found-one

That man is busy!!

I'm not aware that anyone collected actual death rates among the Amish specifically. What I wrote was that areas with high Amish populations had higher COVID death rates. As far as I know, the two counties in America with the highest percentages of Amish and other CA groups are Holmes OH, and Mifflin PA. This is how they did for the entire course of the pandemic:

Total US: 352 deaths per 100,000
Ohio 360 deaths per 100,000
PA 396 deaths per 100,000
Holmes: 434 deaths per 100,000
Mifflin: 659 deaths per 100,000

Pretty amazing really, since it is true they followed none of the mandates which is why we went weekly to Holmes for a sense of normalcy.

What is amazing about it? My own state of Washington had a total COVID death rate of 220 per 100,000 or about half that of Holmes and 1/3 that of Mifflin. Norway had a death rate of 104 per 100,000. Very few countries on the planet had COVID death rates as high as Holmes and Mifflin.

[Valerie]

I'm not aware that anyone collected actual death rates among the Amish specifically. What I wrote was that areas with high Amish populations had higher COVID death rates. As far as I know, the two counties in America with the highest percentages of Amish and other CA groups are Holmes OH, and Mifflin PA. This is how they did for the entire course of the pandemic:

Total US: 352 deaths per 100,000
Ohio 360 deaths per 100,000
PA 396 deaths per 100,000
Holmes: 434 deaths per 100,000
Mifflin: 659 deaths per 100,000

Pretty amazing really, since it is true they followed none of the mandates which is why we went weekly to Holmes for a sense of normalcy.

What is amazing about it? My own state of Washington had a total COVID death rate of 220 per 100,000 or about half that of Holmes and 1/3 that of Mifflin. Norway had a death rate of 104 per 100,000. Very few countries on the planet had COVID death rates as high as Holmes and Mifflin.

Because everyone else masked, social distanced, stayed home, worked from home, vaxxed- opposite of Holmes. People were not controlled by fear. I think the Amish did pretty well all things considered.

Death rates were pretty low compared to the way they made it sound

[Soloist]

Nope. I’d fully expect them to say those things even though they are not true.

Having had an unvaccinated autistic son, I’m not speaking out of ignorance and I’m very well read on vaccines and autism.
You should know I have a strong stance against many vaccines but not all of them. Of course it has zero to do with autism.

I don't know very much about autism, but I do remember a mother of an autistic son blaming it on vaccines. I've been hearing this quite awhile. Not sure where the idea of that connection originated but it's been quite awhile. I found it interesting we had 3 autistic young men where I work- they're all amazing in their own ways- and talk about it freely (except one of them) and they talk about the spectrum- I have yet to meet a female with autism, at least that I was aware of.

Wife: one of my friends here has a daughter who is severely autistic and is in her 20s. Temple Grandin is a famous lady that had it. It's a lot more common in boys than girls, and I think it's the same idea as hemophilia or muscular dystrophy, or other diseases that pass through the X chromosome. You might see those other diseases more often in Amish Mennonites, but that has more to do with the gene pool than health practices. there may be some lifestyle choices Amish make that protect them from things like the autism, but I think not marrying "English" people is probably one of them, not to mention that everything is falling under the autism label nowadays, and unless it's severe, Amish are unlikely to go get it diagnosed. I also remember seeing a study that screentime/games, etc. can increase some autistic like behavior, but I would be very careful blaming someone's child's autism on the parenting because that just gets obnoxious to the parents and it's not always the case.

I remember looking up something related to ultrasounds with this last baby, and finding out that they say that autistic people are three times more likely to present with hydronephrosis or some sort of heart issue on the ultrasound, although hydronephrosis actually appears in one in eight boys anyway, and it is a lot more rare with females. That's actually how we guessed our oldest was a boy, and he was the moderate to severely autistic one.

I like to use my experience with my son as an example of how submitting to your husband when you don't agree with him can still yield benefits he and his family probably would have blamed me, I get asked about his vaccine status so many times, and I probably would've thought that was what caused it too. He got his first shot when he was 3 1/2, and his only bad reaction to any shots was because he bent the needle in his leg grabbing it when he knew it was coming. At that point we just chose to do the vaccines that didn't have connections to fetal cells.

There is a lady I used to be in a Gleaners group with who had a ton of children and several of them were different levels of autism and I'm pretty sure she did not vaccinate, so I do think there's a genetic link at least sometimes. My little brother probably is autistic also and his teachers wanted my dad to get him diagnosed, but it was hard to tell if it was that or just because he's deaf and had a thyroid issue and a bad elementary school education.

[Ken]

Pretty amazing really, since it is true they followed none of the mandates which is why we went weekly to Holmes for a sense of normalcy.

What is amazing about it? My own state of Washington had a total COVID death rate of 220 per 100,000 or about half that of Holmes and 1/3 that of Mifflin. Norway had a death rate of 104 per 100,000. Very few countries on the planet had COVID death rates as high as Holmes and Mifflin.

Because everyone else masked, social distanced, stayed home, worked from home, vaxxed- opposite of Holmes. People were not controlled by fear. I think the Amish did pretty well all things considered.

Death rates were pretty low compared to the way they made it sound

I guess it depends on your definition of "pretty low". If my state of Washington had the same death rate as Holmes County there would have been an additional 17,123 people dead of COVID in this state. That seems like a meaningful number. Plus tens of thousands more hospitalized, suffering from long COVID and so forth. Was it worth the minor inconvenience of some masking and social distancing and getting vaccinated to save that many lives? You tell me. I would guess that a majority of people in this state would say yes.

[Grace]

I would expect it to be true the Amish children are generally more healthy than the median. But that would be due to diet and lifestyle, not childhood vaccination status.

For once Ken and I agree on something. Another aspect that might keep Amish children more healthy is the fact they usually live in less sterile environments, than their non-Amish peers. The fact that they are around horses, other animals, run barefoot, maybe don't bathe as often, etc. builds up their immune systems starting at birth.

[Soloist]

For once Ken and I agree on something. Another aspect that might keep Amish children more healthy is the fact they usually live in less sterile environments, than their non-Amish peers. The fact that they are around horses, other animals, run barefoot, maybe don't bathe as often, etc. builds up their immune systems starting at birth.

My children are not allowed to run outside barefoot… I’m kind of opposed to hookworms.

[Josh]

Holmes Co. has a higher percentage of Amish than Mifflin, so according to Ken’s numbers, the Amish apparently did better with Covid than non Amish people.