Is modern medicine a mistake? Views differ

Why would you want to prevent yourself from getting infected when you can get the same immunity by getting infected, asks America’s Dumbest Senator:

“Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it is?” Johnson then continued. “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease? There are certain things we have to do, but we have just made so many assumptions, and it’s all pointed toward everybody getting a vaccine.”

Let’s translate this into our campfire analogy. Johnson stuck his head into a campfire but, through unusual good luck, emerged with no visible damage at all. And his response is to say that the best way for people to learn about what can happen when you stick your head in a campfire is to stick their heads in campfires — and that to instead warn them about doing so is an affront to God.

What’s completely bizarre about this argument, of course, is that the entire point is that we want people to have some protection against being infected. Immunity is sought, because it means you won’t get sick. Johnson is saying that the way to not get sick is to … get sick. Makes sense. Put another way, Johnson’s argument is the equivalent of saying that you don’t need to wear a bulletproof vest if you instead simply let your torso be perforated by a cannonball. No one’s going to shoot you in the stomach if your stomach has already been shot away! Checkmate, libs.

But then there’s the other side to this argument. Vaccination, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, lessens the likelihood of severe illness from a coronavirus infection. Even with the emergence of the omicron variant, it’s the unvaccinated who are more likely to be hospitalized. From June to November, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 163,000 covid-19 deaths could have been prevented had those who died simply been vaccinated.

Herman Cain was unavailable for comment.

The thing is, while most elite Republicans are able to dress it up in language less baldly stupid than this or duck it entirely, the idea that there’s getting sick is the best cure for COVID (although you might then want some horse paste, which for some reason is more consistent with God’s will than vaccines) is pretty much the party line at this point.