[tlhIngan Hol] Maltz about vaccines and vaccination

[kechpaja at kechpaja.com]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 10:38:24PM +0100, De'vID wrote:
>On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 at 18:00, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> Use of the term {raS'IS} is a holdover from ancient forms of medicine.
>>
>
>I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence or an Okrandian joke, but in
>Chinese, the word for vaccine (疫苗 yìmiáo) happens to contain the character
>for seedling (苗). The word comes from the transliteration of the English
>word "immun(ization)" and has nothing to do with seeds.
>
>(Some vaccines are produced from a master seed bank or using a seed lot
>system, so maybe Dr. Okrand was thinking of that.)

Oh, I just assumed that it was meant to be metaphorical — that the 
vaccine "seeds" your body with the disease so that it can recognize it 
later. He may have been thinking specifically of the mRNA vaccines that 
are being used for covid, in which the vaccine only contains a "seed" 
from which your body constructs the bodies that it will then learn to 
generate antibodies for.

  - SapIr