“After six (un)conscious attempts to become infected, I succeeded,” Jeroen (surname known to the editors) wrote on Facebook on Monday. He is unvaccinated. The harder the government pulls, the deeper the heels go. But a corona ticket seemed useful to him. Because you don’t know how it goes, he says. Maybe at some point it will become mandatory at work. And he wants to be able to take care of himself and, more importantly, his daughter.
As mentioned, it took a while before Jeroen got a hold of it. He had already given a greeting kiss to someone with corona, or a hug. “And the last, successful, meeting was not even the most conscious attempt of the six,” says Jeroen. “Although during that cup of coffee it was clear that the person may have corona.”
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“Unbelievably unwise and then I express myself kindly”, says chairman Ruud Coolen van Brakel of the Institute for Responsible Use of Medicine. “You do not know in advance how serious an infection will be. Whichever way you look at it, there is an easy way to protect yourself against the coronavirus and that is by getting vaccinated.”
How sick do you get?
The biggest problem with deliberately infecting yourself is that you do not know in advance how sick it will make you, says immunologist Marjolein van Egmond of Amsterdam UMC. “Most people in intensive care will also have thought beforehand that it would not make them so sick. Many people who allow themselves to be infected on purpose will pass through it fairly unscathed, but a number of people will also end up in ICU or lung. covid. You just don’t know who they are in advance.”
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There are no figures on the number of people who are deliberately infected. Registration is virtually impossible for quite obvious reasons. But that it happens is not new. At the end of last year, the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate already warned against do-it-yourself products being offered for sale on social media and via special websites.
Distrust incomprehensible
“You expose yourself to a risk, while there is a simple alternative available. With a vaccine you train the immune system without making you sick,” says Van Egmond.
Coolen van Brakel does not understand the mistrust of vaccines. “Never before has there been such massive and transparent use of drug surveillance,” he says. “Every rare side effect is reported, although it only occurs in 1 in 100,000 cases. The risk of contracting a serious infection and experiencing adverse long-term effects is many times greater. For many people it is apparently difficult to get a good risk assessment. make an estimate.”
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Recovered or vaccinated, which is better?
Whether you have recovered from a corona infection or have been vaccinated, in both cases you build up resistance against a subsequent infection with the virus. “Infection and vaccination do more or less the same thing,” says immunologist Marjolein van Egmond, “namely, instruct the immune system.”
“How sick you have been can be important for the degree of protection from infection. If you only get very mild cold complaints, the question is whether you will get a strong immune response. You can dose the immune system with a vaccination and then booster vaccines. train and get better. And you don’t have to get sick first.”
“The advantage of immunity through infection is that you thereby build up an immune response against the entire virus. There is broader protection, while with vaccines you only train against the spike protein, with which the virus attaches to healthy cells. “
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“I don’t believe that I need the vaccine to stay healthy,” says Jeroen, “but the main reason for me is the way in which the government communicates. There is no question of voluntariness, but rather pressure or even coercion. How the more the government pulls it, the more I think: then don’t.”
How flu
Jeroen has not been very ill since he tested positive on Saturday. “The first night I had a bit of flu, but on Sunday I could have gone back to work, so to speak. During the day I have almost no complaints, in the evening it came back slightly for the first few days. Now I still have a little headache now and then , but that’s about it.”
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