Swine Flu logic
July 31st, 2009 — 9:14am
From this article. “We are vulnerable to new bugs such as swine flu precisely because the body needs to have encountered a bug at least once in order to be able to mount a good defence against it. Getting flu is evidence that your immune system is working, not that it isn’t.” First sentence good. Second sentence – total logic failure. Getting flu isn’t evidence of anything except that you don’t have immunity to it. The fact that you don’t have immunity to flu doesn’t – in and of itself - tell you anything general about your immune system. The only thing is that is true is that sometimes a violent immune response can exacerbate the symptoms of flu. Scarily imprecise stuff for a science writer.