Immunity
This plan may sound appealing to people who know a little about the immune system, but the drawbacks are clear to people who know a lot about the immune system and also to people who don't know anything about it.
This plan may sound appealing to people who know a little about the immune system, but the drawbacks are clear to people who know a lot about the immune system and also to people who don't know anything about it.
This comic is, although not specifically referenced, another entry in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A common issue posited by people opposed to vaccination, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that there are other ways to become immune to diseases caused by viruses or bacteria — most notably, contracting the disease "naturally".
Cueball, by way of questioning, points out to White Hat that this makes no sense. Contracting the natural disease is the thing people are trying to prevent. Diseases are bad.[citation needed]
Although there are plenty of instances where someone has already recovered, and therefore is in possession of natural immunity, it would be better to have that immunity without getting sick at all. Especially with a disease like COVID that can cause permanent damage to the lungs, brain, and other organs even to those who eventually clear the virus, and catalyses its effects with the immune system in a novel and dangerous manner. Additionally, COVID can be contracted multiple times. Vaccination provides similar immunity without the dangerous effects of infection. While explaining that getting infected is the best way to avoid getting infected, White Hat thus realizes the circular logic that may be attributed to anti-vaxxers (2806: Anti-Vaxxers), and thus stops mid sentence.
The title text elaborates on this by pointing out that people with no understanding of the immune system will understand that contracting a disease to avoid contracting a disease is a bad idea, and that people with a strong understanding of the immune system will understand the specific ways it can fail (and that vaccines are generally considered to provide a greater benefit for less risk). It is thus only people with a limited understanding of the immune system, who know that infection can provide immunity but haven't thought out the disadvantages of catching the disease, who would make a claim such as White Hat does.
The comic does not specifically reference vaccines and anti-vaxxers. It could also be about people who refuse to wear masks and social distance during the pandemic, who do not understand how much they are putting other people at risk. White Hat may even be fumbling an explanation of his previous 2515: Vaccine Research into why vaccines are good.
Older folks may be familiar with the "infection gives you immunity" trope due to their experience with so-called "childhood diseases". Before there were vaccines for e.g. measles, mumps, and chickenpox, it was seen as preferable for young children to contract these diseases, because the risk of serious illness is greater for those who get "first infections" later in life. Children run a comparatively smaller risk of serious illness in return for (usually) life-long immunity. Note that this only ever made sense for children whose immune system is still flexible enough to adapt, and not for 30 something fitness bros. Furthermore, the trope has outlived its context. Small as the risk to children of serious illness from measles, mumps, and chickenpox might be, vaccines all but eliminate the risk of contracting serious symptoms at all, so many say there is no sensible reason to subject oneself to infection.
The trope, moreover, is misapplied to COVID-19, because, on present evidence, immunity from infection is short-lived (which, at least at the time of this comic, was exacerbated by the fact that variants with sufficiently different spike proteins to at least partially evade natural immunity (such as beta, delta, and omicron) were arising at a rate of multiple per year), so there is no benefit to be gained by running the risk of winding up in the hospital - or the morgue. The better comparison is to influenza, which people get vaccinated against every year. Instead of childhood diseases, think of diseases that had a high probability of serious illness at any age, such as poliomyelitis and smallpox, for which few accepted the "infection gives you immunity" trope (even though, for those diseases, infection typically yielded life-long immunity), and there was far less resistance to effective vaccines once these became available.