How To Keep Safe From Covid-19: #12 What’s A Vaccine

My, these vaccines are so confusing! Which one is for which illness, what kind... Hi, I’m sure you remember me, yes, the name’s Dr.Tigger. Today, I’ll tell you what’s a vaccine!

Vaccines are like liquid medicine injected into your body used to protect you from different and usually deadly illnesses. But even though they seem simple, just some random-colored liquid, they are actually quite complicated.

To understand vaccines, we should first understand how our immune system gets rid of bacteria, viruses, etc. When we detect foreign microbes, our immune system will try to identify and destroy them, causing symptoms like coughing, sneezing, and fever. We also use cells called B-cells and T-cells to fight and record info about the microbes. But this will take lots of time, so that’s where vaccines come in. Ones like live attenuated vaccines and inactive vaccines use tamed or killed versions of the virus. These can also trigger immune responses so that when real, strong viruses invade, we can know how to fight them, though they sometimes don’t work long. Another kind is subunit vaccines, using only the part of a virus, called the antigen, which is what triggers the immune response.

As tech advances, we can make better versions like DNA vaccines, and hopefully, not far from now, a Covid-19 vaccine. Who knows, maybe we might even get a vaccine for cancer! Well, a bit farfetched, anyway, bye, thanks for reading!