Mostly agree, but have you considered that perhaps falling sick once in a while allows your immune system to adapt and become more stronger? I mean vaccines have been around for all of 100-200 years...
The only reason to want your immune system to be stronger is to not get sick, right? I certainly wouldn’t choose to get sick once a month in order to have a super mega strong immune system, for example. The desired end goal is to get sick less often!
In certain cases it may be that getting a mild infection does help prevent later more serious infections, but AFAIK those cases are generally getting infected as an infant or child. I’m not aware of evidence showing that current widespread vaccines for adults have this effect of trading mild illness now for more serious illness later.
afaiu, in theory, immunity acquired through infection can be stronger than the one from vaccination. E.g. vaccination might prime your body for just one protein, whereas an infection would prime for several.
But it's not universally true, varies for different viruses, and also isn't fully understood whether it's the case for covid. So far seems like a safer and less miserable opinion to get vaccinated rather than get sick with covid.
Vaccines do exactly that, without the discomfort of getting sick. That's the whole damn point of a vaccine: to stimulate the immune system. That's how they work. I just can't understand how people fail to grasp this simple fact.
Sure, for diseases we know and are actively fighting (how long was it before we got vaccines for COVID?). My point was that for unknown diseases you might be exposed to in the future you are probably (I say probably, because hey let's not kid ourselves we're all mostly speaking out of our a**s here :)) better off if you had been exposed to milder diseases beforehand.
The number of studies suggesting people exposed to other coronaviruses (common cold etc) having possibly more immunity to COVID disagree with you. You seem to be absolutely sure it makes no difference. Care to back that up?
Care to back up your claim with citations? Looking at the comment history its clear you don't understand immunology so i'm not sure you get a free pass on virology.
I freely and humbly admit I'm neither an immunologist nor a virologist. But I doubt neither are you nor the many commenters on here who have strongly held beliefs backed by nothing substantive.
In certain cases it may be that getting a mild infection does help prevent later more serious infections, but AFAIK those cases are generally getting infected as an infant or child. I’m not aware of evidence showing that current widespread vaccines for adults have this effect of trading mild illness now for more serious illness later.