The articles says exposure to tiny amount can "boost" immunity, which I assume means an immunity acquired earlier from a full blown infection (or vaccination).
Variolation for example, the predecessor to the world's first practice of vaccination (against smallpox) involved taking tiny amounts of live smallpox from scabs or pustules and giving them to people intentionally for a much lighter infection course that made them immune without the usually killing or horrifically disfiguring blow of a full smallpox infection. (look up photos of smallpox scars in survivors, warning, it gets graphic. Even many famous figures like Stalin were completely pockmarked by the scars of the virus for the rest of their lives, as you can see in unedited photos of the dictator)
It usually worked, but sometimes the patients got really sick anyhow and died. By the standards of the time, when fully a third of the population could expect to die from some epidemic disease or another, this was considered wonderful. Today it wouldn't be and thus the complexities of carefully calibrating vaccines.
I suppose one more dangerous thing with this, could be how popular anti vaccination ideas could become, when the anti-vaxxers start saying that vaccine is live virus
Taking random adjuvants consistently after minimal exposure to environmental antigens is more likely to give you deleterious allergies or issues associated with chronic inflammation.
so just describe the procedure, and call it a secret that big pharma doesnt want them to know, and theyre into it. be anybody but a doctor lol
slam dunk
My understanding of vaccine is that they use deactivated viruses but not small doses.
My question is about live viruses, and if we can get exposed to small doses enough that will trigger a immunization mechanism without triggering a full blown infection? Or does it work to boost an existing immunity only.
Some are weakened live agent. Some are killed or neutralized agent. Some are just a protein or other piece of the pathogen. Some like mRNA vaccines are code from the pathogen that causes your body to generate and then sensitize against something. There are probably other types.
I do find the oversimplification in the debate frustrating. Either all vaccines are bad or all vaccines are great when in reality each one is a different thing. As with other drugs some work better than others and some have side effects while others mostly do not.
As near as I can tell the mRNA COVID vaccine is fairly effective at reducing severity and duration of infection but not nearly so at completely preventing infection. There is a small risk of side effects but the danger from a more severe COVID infection is statistically much greater.
Creating a vaccine in a year is nuts. What we came up with is not half bad given that time frame. We will probably have much better COVID vaccines in a few years.
I didn't write that you were, I wrote that I've gotten anti vaxxers to like vaccines with the same logic.
Its pretty clear that its coincidence that you didn't know your hypothesis was the basis of vaccination, regardless of your predilection.
It'd be interesting to understand if that's true for all viruses and in what quantities.
For example, in the early days of COVID, we were told that being close to infected people outdoor did not expose us to enough viruses to get infected. Could such exposure have provided immunity?
You get a hefty dose of vaccine. The difference is that it's either not an infectious agent at all (just a fragment of one) or it's a low-infectious agent.
