I was thinking “so vitamin D and zinc are “vaccines” now with this new definition?” but the CDC was very careful about the words they chose with this new definition. Notice “disease”. Influenza is defined as an illness. Covid-19 as a disease. Therefore they will argue that they are not “vaccine” even though they “boost the immune system”.
Right, under the framework that any "preparation" that "stimulates an immune response" against diseases is a "vaccine," exercise is a vaccine. Smiling is a vaccine. A dog is a vaccine.
Remove the "against diseases," requirement, and you can just inject the incipient cocktail and call it a vaccine. Pollen, peanut butter, jellyfish toxin - all vaccines.
Modern medicine is very squishy on the distinction between discrete infectious agents and "disease" or "illness." The lay and now-erased "official definition" use is/was that the terms overlap. That was always simplistic, but it was still functional for forming a general public consensus about traditional vaccines (even if Tetanus and later other vaccines were strictly against bacterial toxins, not the bacteria itself).
Modern medicine wants to preserve that (imperfect, but functional) consensus while updating "disease" from the simplistic germ theory definition to the more ambiguous definition under which SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and Covid-19 is the disease. Of course, part of doing so is to not even acknowledge *that* difference either.
I love your articles. Your writing is always clear, concise and without errors. Well, almost. I do believe you mean "legalese" and not "legalize" in this piece. Long live Oceana! (Thank you for keeping your fingers to the keyboard.)
Haha, thank you for the kind words and for catching the error - it has been corrected. I swap words and abbreviations around in my mind quite a bit. In trying to balance discussion of the term-heavy realms of politics and medical science at the same time, quite a few linguistic plates are certain to drop.
I was thinking “so vitamin D and zinc are “vaccines” now with this new definition?” but the CDC was very careful about the words they chose with this new definition. Notice “disease”. Influenza is defined as an illness. Covid-19 as a disease. Therefore they will argue that they are not “vaccine” even though they “boost the immune system”.
Right, under the framework that any "preparation" that "stimulates an immune response" against diseases is a "vaccine," exercise is a vaccine. Smiling is a vaccine. A dog is a vaccine.
Remove the "against diseases," requirement, and you can just inject the incipient cocktail and call it a vaccine. Pollen, peanut butter, jellyfish toxin - all vaccines.
Modern medicine is very squishy on the distinction between discrete infectious agents and "disease" or "illness." The lay and now-erased "official definition" use is/was that the terms overlap. That was always simplistic, but it was still functional for forming a general public consensus about traditional vaccines (even if Tetanus and later other vaccines were strictly against bacterial toxins, not the bacteria itself).
Modern medicine wants to preserve that (imperfect, but functional) consensus while updating "disease" from the simplistic germ theory definition to the more ambiguous definition under which SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and Covid-19 is the disease. Of course, part of doing so is to not even acknowledge *that* difference either.
*excipient. Another word I frequently swap.
I love your articles. Your writing is always clear, concise and without errors. Well, almost. I do believe you mean "legalese" and not "legalize" in this piece. Long live Oceana! (Thank you for keeping your fingers to the keyboard.)
Haha, thank you for the kind words and for catching the error - it has been corrected. I swap words and abbreviations around in my mind quite a bit. In trying to balance discussion of the term-heavy realms of politics and medical science at the same time, quite a few linguistic plates are certain to drop.
You're so precise I knew this was exactly that. I'm glad you didn't mind the note. :-D