Thank you very much for your in-depth reply and for clearing things up! Of course I understand, one could easily make this into a 200-lecture course, there is enough material to go on:)
I also went back to check and found I had made a mistake transcribing the quote. Rothbard writes “the resulting loss of resistance to disease” and NOT “loss of resistance to THE disease”, which of course makes a lot of difference.
Thanks!