Inoculation can work therapeutically after exposure, not only preventively.

Evidence

What wasn’t apparent in McGuire’s time is that the answer is actually yes. It’s called ‘therapeutic inoculation’. Although the classic vaccine most people are familiar with is fully prophylactic (preventative), following recent advances in medicine, we now have vaccines which you can administer after people have already been exposed to a virus. Therapeutic vaccines work by activating our immune systems to fight an existing infection. One of the first medical therapeutic vaccines was approved by the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010. ‘Provenge’ is used to treat prostate cancer and works by training a patient’s white blood cells to more vigilantly attack cancer cells. … The incubation period is the time elapsed between initial exposure to a virus and the onset of symptoms. You may have been exposed to misinformation of some kind once or twice but not show any symptoms for a long period of time. Perhaps you needed to be exposed multiple times before sharing or believing it or perhaps you weren’t susceptible in the first place. For biological viruses, the incubation period ranges from a few days for the common flu (influenza) to a few years for viral infections such as HIV. Similarly, for exposure to a misinformation virus the incubation period (that is, before people start to show noticeable symptoms such as believing and sharing) could be days if not years. If we use this new theoretical framework of the medical analogy, we no longer have a need for McGuire’s initial restriction. In the real world, we are dealing with people in various stages of infection, and inoculation can both work as a preventative and therapeutic agent. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 651

Categorization

• XREF: Revisits chapter 5, where awareness of a correction fails to stop misinformation infecting related memories — therapeutic inoculation offers a constructive counterpoint. — connects to: Pre-exposing people to weakened persuasive attacks cultivates mental resistance against later misinformation. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 633; Inoculation can spread socially like herd immunity against misinformation — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 989; Discussing inoculation afterwards strengthens acquired immunity — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 990

Broader Connections

• Discussing inoculation afterwards strengthens acquired immunity #corroborates (0.90) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 990