Comment by anonymouskimmer
2 years ago
Yet another reason to try to avoid getting infected with diseases. A 'stronger' immune system (which is really only 'stronger' at defending against the disease that you just caught!) isn't worth the risk of long-term side effects from a chronic infection.
Immunity not having challenges, especially early in life, is a sure recipe for a miserable life full of allergies (and probably more, autoimmune problems are a vast domain).
Not sure I would want to take a small risk of topic discussed with almost sure chance of this. Maybe some form of risk is unavoidable, and part of life. Of course only till we fully crack our dna manipulation without any side effects, but thats 22nd century stuff at best.
Environmental, non-disease challenges are important to develop proper immune response. Catching the flavor of the day does jack all, and might actually prompt some autoimmune responses and lymphomas (due to the increased activity of the immune system in response to infection).
People who never acquire a chronic herpes zoster infection are highly unlikely to benefit from a shingles vaccine with respect to this sort of dementia.
It kind of depends?
For things like Chickenpox, it’s far better to be infected young (where it’s a mild disease) than old (where it can be quite severe).
It's even better to get vaccinated so that any infection has much decreased odds of becoming a chronic latent infection. Vaccinate enough people and eventually people may not get infected at all.
> which is really only 'stronger' at defending against the disease that you just caught!
if this was the case, we wouldn’t have the smallpox vaccine, or many others. not to mention the massive increase in general disease susceptibility when children aren’t exposed to these agents at a young age
I don't understand what you are saying, because it appears to not follow what I stated. (Edit: Okay, I've got it now.)
A chickenpox infection as a child will indeed help prevent against future chickenpox infections (which, for this particular virus, are indeed worse when first infected as an adult). It may have some slight efficacy against other herpesviruses, too, or it could enable a stronger disease from a related virus due to antibody-dependent enhancement. But more likely a chickenpox infection, and related acquired immune responses, will do jack-all with respect to any other infectious agent.
> more likely a chickenpox infection, and related acquired immune responses, will do jack-all with respect to any other infectious agent
why is this?
3 replies →
> The smallpox vaccine is the first vaccine to have been developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Cowpox served as a natural vaccine until the modern smallpox vaccine emerged in the 20th century. ...
> The term vaccine derives from the Latin word for cow, reflecting the origins of smallpox vaccination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine
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