Once again, I'm migrating more popular posts from the old blog. If this is a repeat for you, sorry. --PalMD
Wow. I mean, wow. I was googling some flu information, and one of the first hits was so fundamentally wrong about all matters medical that I actually felt ill. The dangerous title is "Building a Child's Immunity the Natural Way". It's wasn't clear to me what this meant, so I had to read the damned thing. It starts out pretty bad:
New Jersey's Public Health Council gave its citizens a Christmas present that will not please the health-conscious, as it became the first state in the nation to require flu shots for preschoolers.
So, if your "health-conscious", you are against mandatory vaccination. Hmm...
Vaccines are dangerous for the health of any individual, but when administered to small children in their important developmental years, they are especially damaging. Medical "experts" have not even determined the correct dosages for small children, who in this regard are not just small adults. When we talk about daycare, we are talking about babies as young as a few months of age. Additionally, not only do vaccines usually contain mercury, but many lack effectiveness and can cause problems with the development of the child's natural immune system (emphasis mine).
Look, I'm not going to address all of the anti-vaccination canards present in this piece, other than refer you to other excellent sources. Two things really get me though: lies, and this "immunity" thing.
Even if the evidence of a relationship between vaccine use and autism is disregarded, there are more debilitating results of vaccine administration to children. Due to the availability of new health information, a growing number of scientists and doctors have realized the problems revealed by recent immunology research and have begun to challenge the foundational tenets of vaccination. Because it seems that vaccines have eradicated many diseases in the last 100 years, many doctors have been reticent to question them. Such claims have mainly been based on epidemic studies rather than on clinical evidence.
For example, Europe never used the polio vaccines, yet it experienced the same rise and fall of polio cases as did the U.S.
That, my dear reader, is a lie. OK, if you are being generous, it is just ignorance, but I find it hard to be generous, given a 3 second stop at google will take you over to the World Health Organization and explain its polio eradication campaign in Europe. After a lie like that, it's hard to believe anything that follows.
Also, many diseases that were believed to be wiped out have re-appeared under different names. As an example, spinal meningitis and polio have almost the same exact symptoms. There have never been any studies that proved the vaccines actually did cause the eradication of any disease; it has only been assumed by the fact that that the epidemics seemed to have ceased. The CDC uses the concept that a relationship does not prove causality to downplay the autism-thimerosal link, yet ironically, they don't apply the same standard to the relationship between vaccination usage and the end of an epidemic.
That isn't just "moving the goalposts"; that's digging them up, burning them, and scattering the ashes. We all know epidemiologic studies have their limitations, but it's pretty clear to the scientific community, beyond a reasonable doubt, that vaccines successfully prevent disease. (By the way, "spinal meningitis" and polio are completely unalike, and, believe it or not, we actually have tests to tell us what organism is causing an infection. Welcome to the early 20th century!)
All vaccines depress our immune functions. The chemicals in the vaccines depress our immune system; the virus present depresses immune function; and the foreign DNA/RNA from animal tissues depresses immunity. Studies have found that some metabolic functions were significantly reduced after vaccinations were given and did not return to normal for months. Other indicators of immune system depression included reduced lymphocyte viability, neutrophil hyper-segmentation, and a reduced white cell count. So we are trading a small immune depression for immunity to one disease, our only defense against all known disease for a temporary immunity against one disease, usually an innocuous childhood disease. Vaccines have been linked to AIDS and other immunodeficient disorders as well. The trade-off is not at all fair and not worth the risk.
Wow. This is so damned stupid. And dangerous. First, what does this phrase "immune depression" mean? I don't know. They do give a hint futher down, throwing around big words like "neutrophil hypersegmentation" but that's pretty meaningless as an observation, and without references is completely useless. Then the nice scare tactic of vaccines and AIDS. Nice. Really nice. OK, time to explain how vaccines actually work.
Vaccines and the Immune System
This is really cool...much cooler than the cultists would like you to believe. It is teh über-kool. And please forgive the over-simplification.
We need an example: let's take polio vaccine---you know, the one they never used in Europe when the WHO wiped out polio in Europe. We have two choices, but the one we use the most in N.A. and Europe is the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Both of the polio vaccines have advantages and disadvantages, but hey, I only have so much time.
To make IPV, polio viruses are grown in the lab, then "inactivated" with a chemical. This renders them non-infectious. Then they are injected under the skin, which is where the fun starts...
When the inactivated viruses enter the tissues, immune cells patrolling the area detect foreign chemicals, usually proteins. (Viruses are not living organisms, but basically little bits of RNA or DNA and protein.) These cells engulf the invading viruses, process the parts, and actually display them on their surface, like a sign. Other cells (T-cells) come by, and if any of them happens to be able to read this sign, they get very excited. These cells, by various mechanisms, pass the news of the specific invader on to B-cells, which then mature and start making antibodies that are specific to the polio virus. This takes a few weeks. After this initial introduction of polio to the immune system, the antibody reaction dies down, and a few of these now-polio-specific B-cells go into hibernation in the spleen, lymph nodes, gut, and other nooks and crannies.
Let's fast forward a few years. You are about to go on your dream vacation to Uganda. You've been warned about sporatic cases of polio in the area. You have every intention of avoiding unpurified water and uncooked foods, but nobody's perfect. One night at dinner you accidentally eat the salad. They guy who made the salad just returned from the outhouse, which doesn't have a sink. Eww. In his stool were some polioviruses. These were deposited on his hands, then into your salad, and ultimately into your gut. I hope it was a good salad.
When the virus reaches the gut, it latches onto the intestine. Some of your immune cells recognize it, and start the same process that happened when you were vaccinated. Except you have those clever little "memory B-cells" left over from your vaccination, so instead of the immune reaction taking weeks to ramp up, it takes hours. Your B-cells start dividing and producing antibodies and secreting various important chemicals. The antibodies mark cells infected with polio with a big sign that says "kill me", and the soldiers of the immune system march in and do just that.
If it weren't for your vaccine, the antibody response would have taken too long, and you would have become infected. Chances are you would get lucky and suffer nothing worse than a "stomach flu". Or you could end up paralyzed.
So, when I read idiotic trash like the above article, I get really, really mad. All these years of science, medicine, and public health pumped into the sewer in favor of cult medicine bullshit. They should be ashamed. But of course, they have no shame.
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One of the arguments of the dedialists is that hand-washing caused the eradication of polio.
I don't remember where I heard it. Maybe it was here...but the best reponse I heard to that was:
OK, babies guts get colonized with the natural gut bacteria through exposure by their parents.
If hand-washing completely eliminated exposure to infectious intestinal agents like the polio virus...then how is that babies get colonized with the beneficial gut bacteria?
Human nature includes a tendency to be rather picky about what one eats, and to avoid even contact with some things, such as corpses, and feces. Though food taboos vary from one culture to another, every culture has them. Steven Pinker proposes that this reflects certain hardwired features of the human brain; that evolution has made us all "intuitive microbiologists". The suggestion is not, of course, that the specific taboos themselves are hardwired; but that (reminiscent of Chomsky on language aquistion) the brain comes pre-equipped with some dedicated hardware just itching to be "flashed" with information from the environment. But it's more or less OTP (one-time-programmable) memory. Taboos learned in early childhood are not easily overcome by knowledge, even that gained through formal training in microbiology. Though the infant is quite oblivious to his own slobber, the adult's revulsion at the prospect of, say, spitting on a plate and then licking it clean is unlikely to be significantly reduced by the knowledge that the act incurs no risk.
Defaulting to intuitive microbiology is highly error-prone, but if the early training is based on reasonably justifiable criteria, it will at least tend to err on the side of caution. Intuition, and its child, superstition, can provide not entirely unreasonable guidelines. Believing that a water hole is an abode of malevolent spirits is, to a degree, functionally equivalent to understanding that the water contains high levels of arsenic. Believing that "natural" things are healthier than "artificial" things is, to a degree, functionally equivalent to understanding that life in a modern industrial society involves many risks from exposure to chemical toxins, some with effects which may take place subtly and invisibly.
In addition to being intuitive microbiologists (and immunologists), we are also intuitive psychologists. When others attempt to influence our actions, we know to look for hidden motives. The prospect of being deliberately subjected to the effects of an invisible poison administered by someone with a hidden motive is a powerful two-pronged appeal to intuition, one barely distinguishable from the ancient fear that serves as the basis for what is surely the world's second oldest profession (shamanism).
There is an optimistic way of viewing all of this: that intuitive (that is, superstitious) approaches will ultimately vanish in the face of advancing science. Sometimes I wonder why, if that were going to happen, it hasn't already happened by now. What seems clear is that as long as there are superstitious people, there will be (the functional equivalent of) shamans ready to play to their fears, and who will be happy to incorporate scientific-sounding lingo into the incantations which accompany their rattle-shaking.
I can confirm that from personal experience. I am from Germany, and I can clearly remember taking the vaccine, which was given on a sugar cube at that time. I also clearly remember the posters with a picture of a crippled child and the slogan 'Schluckimpfung ist suess, Kinderlaehmung ist bitter' (oral vaccination is sweet, polio is bitter). That was in the early 70's.
In Estonia (which is certainly in Europe), the last polio outbreak started in 1958. In 1959, vaccination by using oral polio vaccine started, and very high vaccination coverage was achieved within 2 years. Consequence: outbreak was ceased, and the last polio cases in Estonia occurred in 1961 (there were actually two cases in this year). Since then, no poliomyelitis cases (and no VAPP cases) have occurred in Estonia.
As far as I know, Estonia was the first country in the world where polio was eradicated, and it was eradicated certainly due to the vaccination.
I just got into an argument with my wife. It seems pets are now getting attention from the anti-vax crowd. I found a lot of crappy anti-science websites shouting the dangers of the rabies vaccine. If anyone can point me to a good refutation specifically of the anti-rabies vaccine claims I would greatly appreciate it. I'll keep looking.
Thanks, Jason
If not for having encountered them myself, I would have found it hard to believe that there actually are antivaxers so far gone as to entertain the idea that their right to "informed decision-making" should extend to a rabies vax for Fido. I've actually seen threads on antivax boards asking how one goes about getting an exemption for one's dog. I'm not sure exactly what the supporting claims for such an idea would even look like, and have a hard time seeing it being worth much time to even attempt to reason with the sort of person likely to find any such claim persuasive. I suppose you might try something like casually mentioning having heard that leprechuans and oompa loompas don't like unvaxed dogs, but I'm usually inclined to simply point out that in most places, it's not a matter of choice, but of law.
I am a proponent of informed consent. At least know to the best of your ability what is in a vaccine before you risk the life of your child. All a vaccine guarantees is an antigen is being injected into the body inter-muscularly. The issue is not the concept of vaccination; it is what is in the vaccine and the dogma surrounding the "effectiveness" of vaccines. Vaccination does not promote natural immunity. The concept that the antigen antibody response is totally responsible for promoting immunity against said diseases is false. I'm not going to quote all the literature available on this subject, but it it is well known in the scientific community that the number of antibodies present does not confer better immunity, in fact, outbreaks have occurred in populations that were adequately vaccinated, i.e., met the criteria for herd immunity. The issue is what is in a vaccine and the potential contamination of these vaccines with animal DNA, viruses, and bacterium during the attenuation process. Additives in the toxoid are supposed to eradicate any chance of this happening, none the less, the polio vaccine was contaminated with SV40 back in the 60's, which has been found in human cancers. Until long-term studies are being performed by independent labs which have no vested interest in vaccine profits, this will continue to be a hot button topic. The adjuvents and other potentially lethal additives are alarming as well. Let's forget about Hg and talk about aluminum, formalin, phenol, borax, ethylene glycol, dye, acetone, latex, MSG, aborted fetal tissue, Amphotericin B, these are just a few of the poisons the government is allowing to be injected in babies. Do your homework and get informed.
Whoa! Loaded language much? That begs the question of whether there is even a possibility of risk to life. It also assumes informed consent isn't already offered. Nice canards. Got anything in a mallard?
No, the issue is vaccination...you don't believe in it, just like I don't believe in the tooth fairy.
1) "Natural immunity": I don't think it means what you think it means. Care to elaborate?
2) Gibberish regarding Ag-Ab response. Immunology is complicated, but interesting. You may wish to read a little. Vaccines induce antibody production and memory. The cytokines, etc involved are certainly important as well, but I don't think that's what you meant.
3) Of course you're not going to "quote literature well-known to the scientific community"---it doesn't exist. Even if you weren't a lazy, trolling anti-vax cultist, you wouldn't know how to find it.
4) No one counts antibodies. We do epidemiologic studies. Antibody levels are useful in some circumstances, but pretty much irrelevant here.
How 'bout that...you did have your canards lined up. None of your statements are supported. In fact they don't even make sense. You talk about attenuated viruses and toxoid as if they were the same thing, which they are not. You betray a lack of any basic biological education.
Myths busted. You can check out scienceblogs.com for more details, but just as an example, if residual Ampho B were in a vaccine, it certainly isn't enough to cause significant biologic effect in a human. MSG???? WFT???
Do you're homework---you sound like an ass.
"Whoa! Loaded language much? That begs the question of whether there is even a possibility of risk to life. It also assumes informed consent isn't already offered. Nice canards. Got anything in a mallard?"
Is there not a potential risk to the life of a child? I believe that is why VAERS was implemented. It is your assumption that It is not assumed that people have a choice as to whether they vaccinate or not.
"1) "Natural immunity": I don't think it means what you think it means. Care to elaborate?" Vaccination=artificial active immunity. booster shots are needed due to its inability to confer life long immunity. Natural immunity, aquiring the actual disease, confers life long immunity.
"2) Gibberish regarding Ag-Ab response. Immunology is complicated, but interesting. You may wish to read a little. Vaccines induce antibody production and memory. The cytokines, etc involved are certainly important as well, but I don't think that's what you meant."
Vaccine. 2001 Oct 15;20 Suppl 1:S38-41. PMID: 11587808
"4) No one counts antibodies. We do epidemiologic studies. Antibody levels are useful in some circumstances, but pretty much irrelevant here."
Irrelevant? The entire basis for vaccination is that antibodies are produced as a result of the antigen being injected, thereby imparting artificial immunity!
Crone NE, Reder AT. Severe tetanus in immunized patients with high anti-tetanus titers. Neurology 1992;42:761-764. Abstract: Severe tetanus occurred in three immunized patients who had high serum levels of anti-tetanus antibody. The disease was fatal in one patient. One patient had been hyper-immunized to produce commercial tetanus immune globulin. Two patients had received immunizations one year before presentation.
"How 'bout that...you did have your canards lined up. None of your statements are supported. In fact they don't even make sense. You talk about attenuated viruses and toxoid as if they were the same thing, which they are not. You betray a lack of any basic biological education." Please read that paragraph again so you understand that toxoid is not synonomous with attenuation. I'll use the word "vaccine" next time for your sake.
Shah, K and Nathanson, N. "Human Exposure to SV40." American Journal of Epidemiology, 1976; 103:1-12.
Weiss, A.F., et al. "Simian Virus 40-related antigens in three human meningiomas with defined chromosome loss." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1975; 72(2):609-13.
Scherneck, S., et al. "Isolation of a SV40 like papovavirus from a human glioblastoma." International Journal of Cancer 1979; 24:523-31.
"Myths busted. You can check out scienceblogs.com for more details, but just as an example, if residual Ampho B were in a vaccine, it certainly isn't enough to cause significant biologic effect in a human. MSG???? WFT??? Yes MSG has been used as a prep agent in the manufacture of vaccines. Neustaedter R. The Vaccine Giude. Berkely, Ca: North Atlantic Books, 1996. And where is the actual info on that site that refutes my statement? You have some reading to do numb nuts. Love your sarcasm! you are used to being right aren't you.
In this case, absolutely.
Looking forward to your response. "you are used to being right aren't you." That was my sarcasm. You have not been proven right as of yet.
http://www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/2003/May/15/default.htm
info on vaccine ingredients with references. I did not see this referenced on scienceblogs.com.
Correction-Ingredients are at:
http://nvic.org/Vaccine%20Excipients%20CDC.pdf
Hey cultists...read this first...thanks...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9
"Natural immunity, aquiring the actual disease, confers life long immunity."
Simple, concise, and easy to understand. Unfortunately, it's also completely wrong. The most obvious exception is the one suggested by the thread title, "flu woo". Tetanus and pertussis are two more examples of diseases to which lifelong immunity is not conferred by either vaccination or infection. I notice your list includes several entries referencing rabies vaccines. I don't want to presume that your concerns about the ingredients in vaccines extend to those routinely administered only to animals, but I wonder how you'd feel about trying the "natural immunity" approach with a pathogen which, left untreated, produces a case fatality rate very close to one hundred percent in humans.
"although I dont know if there are other methods of synthesis that do involve ethylene glycol. The origin of this claim could also come from other trace chemicals in vaccines as well, such as propylene glycol. Either way, even if there were ethylene glycol in vaccines, it would not be at a concentration anywhere near high enough to be toxic or dangerous."
Talk about getting your canards in a row... I quoted you, non-baseless, peer read reviewed lit. that is accepted by the scientific community. The amount of constituents present in a single dose of vaccine may be benign. None the less, what is the human thresh hold for said constituents in the developing immune system of a baby? I did not bring up Hg; you did. When pro vaccine folks have nothing else to substantiate the fact that their same scientist have performed reputable studies contra to what they believe, they pull back and throw Fudenberg, The Hg asd's link and the like back in protest. I brought none of those subjects up, and Jenny McCarthy? Now your reaching. There are many more studies in peer reviewed literature I can quote if you like? Please stop throwing your old posts at me; they do not pertain to this discussion. Rachter-As far as proving to you that I understand immunology, I'm not going to write a paper for you so you understand it. For the people reading this post, the definition I gave was substantial for discussion. Dissecting my answer and adding that there is more than what I stated, is childish and void from serving the people that read these posts. Face it pal, you've met someone that won't back down to your mechanistic perspective on public health. I look forward to you next post.
"I'm not going to write a paper for you so you understand it."
I'm not surprised. I've seen the virtues of "natural immunity" extolled many times before, but have yet to see any supporting arguments beyond simple (and often, simplistic) appeals to intuition. One recent poster on an antivax board wonders how hard it would be to find someone with measles, so that her child can gain the benefits of "natural, lifelong immunity" by exposure to the wild virus. To me, that's like setting your house ablaze as a fire prevention measure, but if there is a logic to it, I don't see why explaining it should involve writing a "paper". Surely I must be missing something fairly obvious.
Hey Mick,
Here is a nice 2007 review on the supposed SV40, vaccine and cancer debate.
"With respect to the third question, the possibility that the increasing incidence of mesothelioma, brain tumors and NHL in the decades following vaccination might be related to exposure to SV40 in contaminated vaccines seemed plausible when SV40 DNA sequences were identified in these cancers.[11][81] There is no evidence that this is the case. All 4 epidemiologic studies discussed in this review concluded, as had earlier studies,[1] that the increased incidence of the cancers did not occur in those who had the highest risk of SV40 exposure from contaminated vaccine."
Shah, KV, Int J. Cancer, 2007
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17131333?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSy…
Mick, if you were a scientist and understood how to study the scientific literature you would know that the conclusions drawn from 1975 papers don't always hold up to modern analytical techniques.
Racter- You continue to site information that has nothing to do with the initial argument. please catch up to the rest of us. Your attempts at discrediting me are juvenile and not pertinent to the discussion.
Thanks for the abstracts Ozzy, I bought it and I'll read through it when I get a chance.
Ok, so now it's not merely the fact that you're not inclined to "write a paper" that prevents you from being specific, it's that discussion of the "natural immunity" business is suddenly less pertinent than when you first addressed it. If I were only interested in seeing you discredited, I'd be content to simply leave it there, as you seem to be doing a fine job of discrediting yourself. Immunity is a subject which holds a deep fascination for me, so if you decide to dispense with the arm-waving and begin presenting actual arguments, you may consider me genuinely eager to hear them, but frankly, I'm really not that interested in the subject of YOU. Ignorant trolls like you are a dime a dozen.
"Mick, if you were a scientist and understood how to study the scientific literature you would know that the conclusions drawn from 1975 papers don't always hold up to modern analytical techniques."
"Here is a nice 2007 review on the supposed SV40, vaccine and cancer debate."
There are some conflicts with the "review", and here are some more SV40 studies that occurred decades later..
Martini M., et al. "Human Brain Tumors and Simian virus 40." Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1995; 87(17):1331.
Tognon, M., et al. "Large T antigen Coding Sequence of Two DNA Tumor Virus, BK and SV40, and Nonrandom Chromosome Changes in Two Glioblastoma Cell Lines." Cancer Genetics and Cytogenics, 1996; 90(1): 17-23.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Vaccine Information Center is criticizing an article published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) as an attempt by government officials with conflicts of interest to prematurely dismiss the role of polio vaccines
contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV 40) in human bone, brain and lung cancers. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) cites incomplete data and methodological flaws in the government's analysis and points out that there is an inherent conflict of interest in having government officials lead investigations of health problems associated with vaccines which the government researches, regulates and promotes for universal use.
"There are huge information gaps in data used by the government to come up with the conclusion that simian virus 40 (SV40) contaminating early polio vaccines have not played a role in human cancers. It is another example of bad science by government officials using limited data to make the public believe they have the answers before all the facts are in," said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of NVIC.
Howard Urnovitz, Ph.D., a microbiologist and founder of Chronic Illness Research Foundation whose father died of one of the kinds of cancers being associated with SV-40 contaminated polio vaccines, calls the analysis by NIH official Howard Strickler and his colleagues "a misuse of statistics that disregards important published scientific data by independent scientists contradicting the government's conclusions. Once again, the US government is first making conclusions conforming with its policies and then using a civil servant to go out and find a database to support its conclusions. It is a great disservice to the American public."
Walter Kyle, author of a 1992 article in The Lancet entitled Simian retroviruses, poliovaccine, and origin of AIDS, said "I am surprised that JAMA would publish an article written by a government official whose conclusions were basically discredited in a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) documentary that took the time to independently analyze his data. In the US, killed polio vaccines are sold which still use monkey cell tissues for production but in Canada only killed polio vaccines grown on human cell tissues are sold. Canadian scientists have
recognized the real risk of health problems associated with inter-species transfer of viruses which humans have already experienced with "mad cow" disease, the "bird flu" and AIDS."
NVIC maintains that the analysis by NIH official Howard Strickler and his colleagues was published in JAMA without any acknowledgment that there is strong scientific data contradicting the government's conclusions. NVIC points out that the government's analysis:
* ignores the fact that SV40 virus DNA is detected in cancers of children born during the past 5 years, suggesting that government scientists do not know how SV40 is transmitted from person to person or whether SV40 is a monkey/human chimera (hybrid virus) capable of being passed from parent to child;
* ignores the fact that the development of cancer never is caused by one factor (if so, all smokers would develop lung cancer) but is caused by a combination of co-factors; therefore, Strickler's analysis dismisses the fact that SV40 and asbestos could be co-factors in the development of mesotheliomas (tumors of the lining of the lungs and chest). Mesotheliomas were almost unheard of before the 1950's, when contaminated polio vaccines were first introduced and asbestos (which has been scientifically linked with mesotheliomas) began to be used in commercial building;
* ignores the fact that, in addition to children, millions of adult Americans received the contaminated polio vaccines in the 1950's and early 1960's and more than 2,000 Americans today are suffering from mesotheliomas compared to very rare cases of mesotheliomas in 1960.
* ignores the fact that mesothelioma rates increase with age and, therefore, children who got polio vaccine in 1955 would be under 50 years old in 1997 and would not yet have reached the high risk age for mesotheliomas;'
In addition, the government's analysis depended heavily on cancer statistics provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) which only began collecting data in 1973; therefore, children who received contaminated polio vaccines and died of cancer before 1973 were excluded from the data included in the analysis. Further, the NCI data Strickler relies upon only reflects approximately less than one-tenth of the U.S. population, so it is not a complete reflection of cancer rates in the entire U.S. population.
http://nvic.org/PressReleases/prpolio12798.htm
"There are some conflicts with the "review"...
So what are these conflicts?
Wow, the stupidity here is amazing. Even the most basic reading in immunology would have told you that this is sheer nonsense. Yes, antibodies are produced, but that is not the "basis for vaccination." The basis for vaccination is stimulation of the division of antibody producing cells, so that if you are exposed to the infectious agent in the future, your body will have a "head start" in figuring out what kinds of antibodies are needed and producing them in quantity. Immunity is the result of an increase in the population of cells that make antibodies directed toward the invading organism.
The notion that vaccine-induced immunity is "artificial" and somehow different from disease-induced immunity betrays a profound ignorance of biology. How do you imagine that your body's immune cells tell the difference between the antigens of a virus that enters the bloodstream by infection as opposed to one that is injected? They are the same molecules, and they produce immunity in the same way.
Immunity is the result of an increase in the population of cells that make antibodies to the antigens of an invader. Those cells aren't immortal, so the numbers will drop over time, and the immunity gets weaker, regardless of whether it was initially acquired by infection or by injection. In addition, some microorganisms mutate over time, and are no longer as effectively ssuppressed by the "old" antibody. Again it doesn't depend upon whether the immunity arose by vaccination or by infection.
it's from NVIC, it's a press release, and the link is broken
Strike three - your OUT