Hacker News Reader

Comment by smorgusofborg | Hacker News Reader

It's problematic to be pedantic about something that isn't true. A vaccine causes an immunity response. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is a vaccine because it relies on an immunity response, not because it prevents the spread of cancer. Vaccinations are often the best method of preventing a infectious disease but not all vaccines prevent contagion.

View on HN

Sorry, I think you're right. A vaccine, legally, only has to prevent disease. That doesn't mean it has to cause your body to sterilize/kill the virus. That, and immunity is not an on/off thing but a scale in how much of a disease your body can prevent.

But then I'm confused because couldn't we then consider, for example, vitamin D a vaccine? It's more commonly understood as a prophylactic - but then what's the difference between a vaccine and a prophylactic?

Just that vaccines are traditionally meant to be made from dead viral agents?

EDIT: Okay I found the difference:

Here's the definition of vaccine from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170221053411/https://dictionar...

And here's the definition right now: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vaccine

So, the definition changed from "[an innoculated bacterium/viral agent] that [prevents disease]", to "[any substance] that [produces antibodies]".

A prophylactic is "[any substance] that [prevents disease]".

Technically that still means a prophylactic is not a vaccine and vice versa because of the requirement that vaccines generate antibodies specifically.

>It's problematic to be pedantic about something that isn't true. A vaccine causes an immunity response. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is a vaccine because it relies on an immunity response, not because it prevents the spread of cancer. Vaccinations are often the best method of preventing a infectious disease but not all vaccines prevent contagion.

I am asking these other people what we should do. It seems your in the camp that it's fine to keep calling the covid shot a vaccine. This is fine with me. We simply now need a new term for the vaccines which do prevent contagion.

I suppose the actual word used is irrelevant. Can you goto https://www.wordgenerator.net/fake-word-generator.php and push the button 5 times and tell me what the new term is?

I will then say, the covid shot is NOT that $newterm. That I recommend everyone get the $newterm shots, but since the covid shot isn't $newterm... well...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com