Virologist Christian Drosten: Naturally Acquired Immunity Is Not Like Eating Steak, or Something
Also, Markus Söder on the necessity of vaccine mandates, and superspreading in the Icelandic parliament.
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Germany’s foremost Corona astrologer, Christian Drosten, ventures to lecture Twitter on the nature of human immunity:
If you think you can train your immune system through infection, you must also believe that you can train your digestive system with steak.
Seriously, immune response vs. “strong immune system” is like learning vs. intelligence. I can memorise a poem, but that doesn’t make me more intelligent. I can survive an infection, but I have not “strengthened my immune system.”
I’m amazed at how many misunderstandings and misconceptions exist surrounding infection, vaccination and immunity. With a bit more knowledge, many here could avoid aggression and instead make better decisions for themselves.
There’s a lot that could be said in response to this drivel, the product of a truly mediocre mind, which is ever toying with incoherent metaphors and rejoicing in semantic victories. Everything Drosten says applies equally to immunity from vaccination, but he ignores that point, because his real purpose is to cast indirect, implicit aspersions on immunity from infection. Of course, nobody should be surprised that the man who called Corona “a minor illness … a cold” on 2 March 2020 was just a few months ago saying quite different things. As late as 3 September, Drosten was still able to acknowledge that
Immunity from infection is more robust in the long run. My goal as virologist Drosten, is … I want to have vaccine immunity and then, on top of that, I want to have my first infection, and my second, and my third at some point.
I don’t know, that sounds an awful lot like training to me.
Meanwhile, Markus Söder, minister president of Bavaria (CSU), continues his disturbing totalitarian spiral, with remarks made at a press conference just before Christmas:
And with a vaccine mandate, we can also control this better. With a vaccine mandate, there is a clear option for control. Who is to be vaccinated, when and how. At what intervals and why, then you can structure it much better and ultimately also try to get ahead of the waves instead of always running after them.
This is the same man who recently told Bild that the coalition government “should not be telling us what to eat,” in response to the demands from the Food and Agriculture Minister for higher meat prices. On Christmas, he voiced hopes that a vaccine mandate will help us overcome social divisions.
Finally, the heavily vaccinated Icelandic parliament has been hit with a wave of Corona infections, which started among the opposition parties and soon spread into the cabinet.
Three ministers have now tested positive; run this incredibly stupid article through Google translate to see how they’re spending their time in quarantine: Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson is hard at work on a jigsaw puzzle, Science Minister Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir is eating take-out, and Foreign Affairs Minister Þórdís Kolbrún R. Gylfadóttir is hanging out with her cat. This is obviously a highly dangerous disease, worth every inch of the social and economic destruction we have wrought, in our futile attempts to contain it.
'There’s a lot that could be said in response to this drivel, the product of a truly mediocre mind, which is ever toying with incoherent metaphors and rejoicing in semantic victories.'
That's a line I'll remember.
The denial of natural immunity to me is the most obvious flaw with the push for universal vaccination. When Dr. Gupta keeps pressing Rogan to get vaccinated even though he's probably got better immunity than him, it gets creepy. Like drug dealer pushing drugs creepy.
This is a textbook example of the straw man fallacy. Drosten is misrepresenting the opponents’ argument, then refuting his own misrepresentation. AFAIK, very few people are arguing that getting infected with Sars-CoV-2 improves your immune system in a general way - but many are arguing that it gives you a robust immune response against future Sars-CoV-2 infection, that may be more long-lasting and broader against newer variants than the one resulting from vaccination.