totally or partially resistant to a particular infectious disease or pathogen.
protected or exempt, especially from an obligation or the effects of something.
Merriam Webster
: not susceptible or responsive
especially: having a high degree of resistance to a disease
a: produced by, involved in, or concerned with immunity or an immune response
b: having or producing antibodies or lymphocytes capable of reacting with a specific antigen
a: marked by protection
b: free, exempt
So unless you pretend that MW’s 2b sense is the only valid one, the immunity is immunity.
If you have a sample of HIV at 37°C in blood, but with all the immune cells removed, it’ll still all become inert after around a week simply due to chemical reactions with other components of blood etc… It’s pretty comparable to a population of animals - if you take away their ability to reproduce, they’ll die of old age when left for long enough even if you’re not actively killing them.
Edit: fat-fingered the save button while previewing the formatting
And the context was a sentence that was correct if you used OED sense 1, or MW sense 1, but you decided to parse it as MW sense 2b and then complain that the sentence was incorrect.
How about we operate at high school biology levels of understanding?
As for whether the virus will be eliminated, it depends on the health of the immune system and the person.
OED:
Merriam Webster
So unless you pretend that MW’s 2b sense is the only valid one, the immunity is immunity.
If you have a sample of HIV at 37°C in blood, but with all the immune cells removed, it’ll still all become inert after around a week simply due to chemical reactions with other components of blood etc… It’s pretty comparable to a population of animals - if you take away their ability to reproduce, they’ll die of old age when left for long enough even if you’re not actively killing them.
Edit: fat-fingered the save button while previewing the formatting
Context is how you determine definitions. This is not hard. We’re not talking about legal immunity here.
And the context was a sentence that was correct if you used OED sense 1, or MW sense 1, but you decided to parse it as MW sense 2b and then complain that the sentence was incorrect.