Why You Can’t Catch The Coronavirus From Your Vaccination.
Unless you were born before the sixties, you’re unlikely to have lost friends to the limb and lung paralyzing horror of polio virus infection or known babies born with hearing, vision and heart problems after their pregnant mother caught rubella.
And when you hear the word Diphtheria?
It only makes you think of the Victorian England of Charles Dickens’ novels.
These infections along with others like whooping cough, tetanus and mumps have been vaccinated almost into oblivion, becoming diseases found only in the pages of our history books.
But as diseases have disappeared, vaccines have become victims of their own success. Because without firsthand knowledge of these appalling infections, an increasing number of people now worry about the very rare but yes, sometimes significant side-effects of the many immunizations we’re encouraged to have these days.
And being told that the Coronavirus vaccinations are a new type of vaccine produced at “warp speed”, perhaps explains why up to 50% of people are reluctant to be vaccinated against a virus which has caused turmoil in almost every facet of our lives.
Increasing confidence in this vaccine roll out starts with knowing a basic principle of our immune system and this principle is key to understanding not just the various corona vaccines but all vaccines - until we’ve encountered a particular nasty like the coronavirus or the tetanus bacterium, we’re almost defenseless against that germ.
Seems like an evolutionary oversight doesn’t it?.
We’re surrounded by almost infinite number of different germs but we don’t have protection until our second exposure?
However, having from birth an immune system armed to defend us against all possible germs would consume a massive proportion of our bodily resources and for what - because even living a thousand lifetimes, we will never encounter 99.9% of these germs.
So instead, we’ve evolved to take just a bit of a risk - we meet an unfamiliar germ and we’re sick for a few days whilst behind the scenes, our immune system is cranking up processes to create new, very specific defenses to nuke that particular unwelcome guest.
Now when someone coughs or sneezes that same germ over us, defenses like white blood cells and antibodies are waiting, specifically looking out for that germ to annihilate it before it can get up to any of its mischief - we won’t even know we were ever re-visited!
Where does this fit in with getting our “shots”?
Traditional vaccinations work by injecting us with a particular germ that’s been either killed or severely weakened. That dead or sabotaged germ can’t cause its normal mayhem but is still enough to poke our immune system to go to work creating those key defenses.
For anyone nervous about having germs, even dead or weakened ones, injected into their arm, this takes us rather beautifully to one of the advantages of the newly famous mRNA anti-corona vaccines - no germ, alive or otherwise is being injected into us.
How do they work then?
I suspect that before 2020, most of us would have recognized a picture of a virus only if it had “this is a virus” written underneath it.
But this one is rather familiar except ..
… nope, that’s not actually a coronavirus.
What we’re looking at here is the outer, protective layer of a virus particle – the pesky, illness-causing virus is hidden, deep inside.
Like a rather unpleasant gift wrapped up inside a parcel.
The coronavirus packaging is distinctively decorated with the now notorious spike proteins, the proteins the virus particles uses to stick to our cells before they push the corona virus inside. That makes these proteins a really, really big deal because the corona virus (like all viruses actually) can only wreak havoc once it’s inside our cells.
Think of it like this.
Back in 2001, exceedingly poisonous anthrax-containing envelopes were sent to the Whitehouse. Although many people handled the correspondence, only the people who came in contact with the packet contents became ill (with five sadly dying). Once the security services knew how to recognize these envelopes, these professionals could safely destroy them without opening them and putting people’s health and safety at risk.
Like these security experts, if our immune system could quickly recognize the coronavirus packaging and put out a body-wide alert “destroy that package on sight”, our cells would never come in contact with the actual deadly virus, the “gift” inside the package.
Cue mRNA vaccines.
mRNA molecules are chemical instructions that cells follow to make a protein and the mRNA molecules in these vaccines tell our cells how to make…… the spike proteins.
Um, does that seem like a horrible idea?
Our own cells making corona virus spike proteins?
Yikes.
Except remember, spike proteins are only part of the virus packaging. If our cells use the mRNA instructions from the vaccine to start pumping out tons of these spike proteins, these proteins won’t make us ill because … they’re just part of the virus wrapping! But our immune system is getting an excellent look at these proteins and is now busy creating those vital defenses: the white cells and antibodies specifically designed to target these corona virus spike proteins.
Now if we’re exposed to COVID-19-causing virus droplets, our defenses are ready to destroy the virus parcels on sight before they get chance to open and do their worst.
We should mention here that having mild side effects, like a headache, slight fever or just feeling a little “off” is a sign that our immune system has been activated and is cranking up those defenses.
It absolutely does not mean we had a mild dose of the virus - the vaccination didn’t expose us to the corona virus in any form, killed or weakened, making it plain impossible to catch COVID-19 from receiving the vaccine
(Of course, there are certain side-effects that need to be taken seriously - please talk with your health care professional about these when you have your shot!).
There’s no doubt then that these mRNA vaccines are revolutionary and yes, because we’re not injecting the actual germ into people, they’re a safer type of vaccination.
What about the “warp” speed concern?
In fact, we’ve known how to make mRNA molecules since the seventies but they were exceedingly fragile – breaking down, for example, as soon as they were moved out of a test tube. It’s taken more than four decades and the collective minds of many scientists to make them robust enough to use in a vaccine - still exciting but definitely not warp speed!
Regular media mention of the amazing production speed of these vaccines has helped to raise doubts about due diligence in the testing. Reassuringly, we now know that for example, the Pfizer vaccine was tested for both safety and effectiveness, on more than twenty thousand people. By comparison, that new drug we might be prescribed for our migraines or our irritable bowel syndrome is likely to have been approved for use after trials on somewhere between 300 and 3000 people!
Knowing all of this, I’m feeling even more comfortable about scheduling my appointment as soon as it’s my age group’s turn - in fact it’s one of the very few times in my life when I would have welcomed being older!
Don’t forget to check out the geek notes for some extra fun facts and until next time,
