Question: As the vaccine contains part of the disease prevented, can we be vaccinated while we are sick?

Carmen Denman answered on 9 Mar 2015:

That is a great question,

I would avoid being vaccinated while sick. The vaccine primes your body to induce an immune response (albeit a less severe response than if you actually caught the nasty bug in the first place) so if your body is fighting that same infection or another separate infection it would be silly to weaker it by vaccinating at that moment.

Also, with some diseases, once you catch them and get well, you already have immunity so do not need a vaccine. Examples of this is chicken pox. There is a vaccine now, but only since 1995. So many of us ‘oldies’ didn’t get vaccinated but are still protected because we have battled the virus and won, and our cells should remember that battle and protect us in the future.