BEHAVIORAL IMMUNE SYSTEM
2月
22日
IN RELATIONSHIP TO WHY OR WHY NOT GET THE COVID VACCINE CONTROVERSIES BY NORMAN DOIDGE
One reason is that in humans (and other animals), any infection can trigger an archaic brain circuit in most of us called the behavioral immune system (BIS). It is that circuit triggered when we sense we may be near a potential carrier of disease, causing disgust, fear, and avoidance. It is involuntary and not easy to shut off once it’s been turned on.
The BIS is best understood in contrast to the regular immune system. The “regular immune system” consists of antibodies and T-cells and so on, and it evolved to protect us once a problematic microbe gets inside us. The BIS evolved to prevent us, from getting infected in the first place, We learned to be hypersensitive to hygiene, hints of disease in other people, even signs that they are from another tribes.
In ancient times, encounters with different tribes could wipe out one’s own tribe with an infectious disease they carried. The “foreign” tribe had its own long history of exposure to pathogens, some of which it still carried, but to which it had developed immunity in some way. Members of the tribe were themselves healthy, but dangerous to others. And so we developed a system whereby anything or anyone that seems like it might bear significant illness can trigger an ancient brain circuit of fear, disgust, and avoidance.
The BIS doesn’t get or stay activated in people who don’t feel vulnerable, perhaps because they have good PPE, or because their youth gives them strong innate immunity, or because they know they’re already immune, or because they’re seriously misled or delusional about the reality of the disease. For everyone else, though, what might trigger the system is rather plastic; but once triggered, the system is involuntary.
Read the whole article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/needle-points-vaccinations-chapter-one
Doidge quotes Alexis de Tocqueville. In democracies a range of views can be expressed. But once a majority opinion forms, it acquires a sudden social power, and it brings with it pressure to end dissent. A powerful new kind of censorship and coercion begins in everyday life (at work, school, choir, church, hospitals, in all institutions) as the majority turns on the minority, demanding it comply. Tocqueville, like James Madison, was concerned about this “the tyranny of the majority,” which he saw as the Achilles’ heel of democracy.
Personally, I choose to be vaccinated for practical reasons and I have enhanced my immune system in various natural ways as well. I want to travel and I don’t mind wearing masks to protect ourselves and others. It may seem wishy-washy, but I have a middle of the road personality and work to keep it that way.
