This is an essay about vaccine hesitancy by someone who is a physician and neuroscientist.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/needle-points-vaccinations-chapter-one One of the interesting ideas from the essay is BIS or behavioral immune system. This operates at the behavioral level rather than at the molecular or cellular level. Either the vaccine or the covid virus could trigger the BIS. begin quote << ...ever since they were made available, vaccines have been controversial, and it has almost always been difficult to have a nonemotionally charged discussion about them. One reason is that in humans (and other animals), any infection can trigger an archaic brain circuit in most of us called the behavioral immune system (BIS). It’s a circuit that is triggered when we sense we may be near a potential carrier of disease, causing disgust, fear, and avoidance. It is involuntary, and not easy to shut off once it’s been turned on. The BIS is best understood in contrast to the regular immune system. The “regular immune system” consists of antibodies and T-cells and so on, and it evolved to protect us once a problematic microbe gets inside us. The BIS is different; it evolved to prevent us from getting infected in the first place, by making us hypersensitive to hygiene, hints of disease in other people, even signs that they are from another tribe—since, in ancient times, encounters with different tribes could wipe out one’s own tribe with an infectious disease they carried. Often the “foreign” tribe had its own long history of exposure to pathogens, some of which it still carried, but to which it had developed immunity in some way. Members of the tribe were themselves healthy, but dangerous to others. And so we developed a system whereby anything or anyone that seems like it might bear significant illness can trigger an ancient brain circuit of fear, disgust, and avoidance. The BIS is, I would argue, one of the instinctual reactions that missed appearing in medical textbooks perhaps because we’ve not had a pandemic on this scale for 100 years. Because it focuses on potential bearers of disease, the BIS triggers many false alarms, since an infected person may at first show only the mildest and nonspecific symptoms, such as a cough or sniffle, before they become deathly ill; that’s why even a small exhalation or a surface touched by a stranger could trigger the BIS. Were it a medical test of danger, we would say this system tends to err on the “false positive” side. We see it firing every day now, when someone drives alone wearing a mask, or goes for a walk by themselves in an empty forest masked, or when someone—say with good health and no previous known adverse reactions to vaccines—hears that a vaccine can in one in 500,000 cases cause death, but can’t take any comfort that they have a 99.999% chance of it not happening because it potentially can. Before advanced brain areas are turned on and probabilities are factored in, the BIS is off and running. It can also trigger rage, but rage is complex, because it is normally expressed by getting close to the object, and attacking it. But with contagion, one fears getting too close, so generally the anger is expressed by isolating the plague-bearer. The BIS is thus an alarm system specific to contagion (and, I should add, to the fear of being poisoned, which before the development of modern chemistry often came from exposure to living things and their dangerous byproducts, such as venoms). Thus it can also be triggered by nonanimate things, like body fluids of some kinds, surfaces others may have touched, or even more abstract ideas like “going to the grocery store.” There is one exception: The BIS doesn’t get or stay activated in people who don’t feel vulnerable, perhaps because they have good PPE, or because their youth gives them strong innate immunity, or because they know they’re already immune, or because they’re seriously misled or delusional about the reality of the disease. For everyone else, though, what might trigger the system is rather plastic; but once triggered, the system is involuntary. One of the reasons our discussions of vaccination are so emotionally radioactive, inconsistent, and harsh, is that the BIS is turned on in people on both sides of the debate. Those who favor vaccination are focused on the danger of the virus, and that triggers their system. Those who don’t are focused on the fact that the vaccines inject into them a virus or a virus surrogate or even a chemical they think may be poisonous, and that turns on their system. Thus both sides are firing alarms (including many false-positive alarms) that put them in a state of panic, fear, loathing, and disgust of the other.>> end quote Harry On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 9:49 PM Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> The fact that it is more infectious may turn out to be a boon rather than >>> a problem, as it would >>> outpace all other strains, and "immunize" those who are unwilling to get >>> the jab. >>> It may also save governments around the world from having to spend >>> billions on vaccines. >>> >> > That would not save any money. On the contrary, it would cost hundreds of > times more than vaccinations. A vaccinated person seldom gets sick. An > unvaccinated person who suffers from a mild case of COVID or influenza will > have to spend a week or two recuperating. That means missing days of work, > and taking over the counter medication. The cost of the missed work and > medication far exceeds the cost of two or three vaccines. Also, some number > of people will die from Omicron no matter how mild it is. Even if it is as > mild as influenza, it will kill hundreds of thousands, and many others will > suffer long term damage, whereas not a single person has died or been > seriously hurt by the mRNA vaccines, even after 6 billion doses. So, the > vaccine is far safer. > > Influenza is less deadly than Omicron, yet influenza vaccines are far > cheaper and safer than getting influenza. That is why governments > everywhere subsidize them and give them out for free. > > A vaccine is always cheaper and safer than the disease it prevents. That > is why children are given vaccines for chickenpox and mumps, which are > seldom deadly diseases. (Children in the US have to get these vaccines to > attend school.) > >
