Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

The internet was once seen as a valuable tool to obtain medical information from experts. Now, it seems that it has become a repository of garbage where every idiot can dump the most preposterous (and potentially dangerous) theories. One of these crackpot theories, presented as a fact by conspiracy theorists, is Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, shortened to VAIDS.

The claim is that COVID-19 vaccines are causing a new illness called Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

It baffles the critical mind that people would even consider this theory, because your immune system doesn't know the difference between a virus and a vaccine. The only difference between the two is that the vaccine contains only a tiny part of a dead virus. It can't replicate in your body, giving your immune system ample time to react.

Still, widely circulating social media posts falsely identified Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome as an emerging condition that is “similar to AIDS but caused by the Corona-19 vaccines.”

AIDS is a generalized body-wide compromise of a specific subset of immune cells (mostly CD4+ lymphocytes) caused specifically by infection with the HIV-1 virus. There is no vaccine-induced counterpart of AIDS.

Vaccines do not cause immunodeficiency. They don’t deplete any immune cells. The opposite is true: they stimulate immune cells to be activated, divide and produce molecules like antibodies and soluble factors to recognize a pathogen and rid the body of it. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others shows the COVID-19 vaccines boost the immune response. The mRNA vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize the spike protein on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19, allowing it to generate an immune response, experts say.

Given that billions of people around the world have already been vaccinated against COVID-19, if such a 'thing' as Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome existed, scientists would have detected it by now. Wouldn't they...