Thread by @michaelmina_lab

I truly dislike the term "Natural Immunity"

There is no such thing as artificial immunity

A vaccine drives a NATURAL immune response

The question is simply "how do you want to start building that immunity?" Through a risky infection or via a safe vaccine

Me? I choose vaccine.

Vaccines are one of the most holistic interventions we have in medicine and public health.

Vaccines utilize our natural evolved processes to provide our immune system with an Education.

They aren't a pill that kills pathogens by distributing to all our tissues...

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Vaccines are perhaps the most natural thing we do in medicine to protect ppl from infections

Vaccines are small proteins that get taken up naturally by our immune cells.

The immune cells do exactly what they evolved to do naturally. Vaccines don't force anything.

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Before COVID I interacted a LOT with vaccine deniers and vaccine hesitant people - usually around MMR vaccines.

I've always been surprised that the same ppl that would avoid a vaccine would have no problem with an antibiotic. Both are crucial. One is much less destructive.

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I recognized over time though that most people just don't understand how vaccines work

Immunity is almost unfathomably difficult to understand without a solid foundation of cell biology - which most don't have.

So it makes sense that vaccines seem scary. Like black magic.

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But vax should not be scary. They work ONLY by utilizing our natural body processes

So when we say "Natural immunity" as that derived from an infection only - it's confusing & makes immunity from a vaccine sound synthetic, forced and thus dangerous

But it's natural immunity

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(Note - for those that will nitpick and say "but there is artificial immunity... look at monoclonal antibodies and interleukin treatments, etc etc... yes of course - but these are very very different things. Vaccines are not synthetic immunity.)