I love that there’s a large overlap between raw milk drinkers and antivaxxers. Because one of the primary arguments for raw milk is along the lines of “if you drink raw milk and expose your immune system to small amounts of the pathogens, you won’t get sick in the future!”

Gee, almost as if the medical community already figured that out decades ago, and has been systematically exposing people to safe versions of pathogens so the general public is able to build an immunity to them. If only there were a word for such a practice.

Also, raw milk was supposedly one of the primary reasons that a vaccine for smallpox was developed; It’s a likely apocryphal story, but someone apparently noticed that milkmaids never got smallpox. And after some research, they discovered it was because those milkmaids all had cowpox previously. And apparently cowpox is similar enough to smallpox that the body develops antibodies for both. So catching cowpox inoculated the milkmaids against smallpox.