What Are Vaccines?

[Tupelomojo]

A vaccine is a substance that teaches your body to recognize a foreign invader, such as a virus, sound an alarm to activate your immune system, and instruct your fighter cells and proteins to go to work to fight the virus. The goal of a vaccine is to eliminate or control the virus in your body, which could prevent infection, or control an infection from developing into disease. The vaccine causes the immune system to respond by looking as much like the invading virus as possible without causing disease itself.

Vaccines have been used for decades around the world. While smallpox is the only infectious disease to date that has been eliminated globally by vaccination, vaccines have reduced the burden of many other infectious diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, and pertussis. Most recently, vaccines for the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV), pneumonia, and shingles have been developed.

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[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Good find. Vaccines and sanitation engineering have saved more lives than possibly all other medical health developments combined. Both have a very long history with the smallpox* vaccination dating from 1796, well over 200 years ago. Sanitation interventions go back to 1854:healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Non-live vaccines work by exposing our immune system to the proteins by which our bodies can recognise an invader and develop antibodies, without us getting ill. Live attenuated vaccines use crippled infectious agents, which, when we have CLL, can potentially make us very ill.

* Interesting fact for those concerned about childhood vaccinations possibly overwhelming children's immune systems. The first smallpox vaccine included about 200 different proteins to stimulate immunity. Children expose themselves to thousands of new proteins every day, from breathing in pollens, dust, etc, what they put in their mouths and so on. According to Dr Paul Offit, an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology, all the childhood vaccinations expose children to around 160 proteins in total. We've learned a lot about how to make vaccinations saver and more effective in the past 225 years!

Neil

[Tupelomojo in reply to AussieNeil]

Thanks for your reply and info Neil 👍‍

[DawnRedwood]

I was told that a "vaccine " contained either a dead or live virus. But it seems that isn't the case anymore.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to DawnRedwood]

Dawn and mnmnewtons , that's actually a huge advance, that we no longer need to include dead or live viruses, bacteria, etc in vaccines. All we actually need is the unique parts of what we are encouraging our immune system to recognise any dangerous invaders and deal with them before they make us sick. Per Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitope those parts are called epitopes. "An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells. The epitope is the specific piece of the antigen to which an antibody binds."

By reducing what we include in vaccines to the minimum necessary, that reduces the impact on our immune system to only dealing with what is needed to give us immunity. It's just a further refinement on the reduction of proteins from the 200 different types in just one smallpox vaccination I mentioned above to about 160 for all the vaccinations we have nowadays.

Neil

[DawnRedwood in reply to AussieNeil]

I'd rather have the dead virus, never had a problem with those. The mRNA seems more like an operating system for your DNA. I did notice that the CDC recently changed the definition of a "vaccine" so that it would include this new system.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to DawnRedwood]

The claim that the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 do not fit the CDC and FDA’s definitions of a vaccine, which state that vaccines have to both stimulate immunity and disrupt transmission of a virus, was promoted by David Martin, a financial analyst and self-help entrepreneur who operates a YouTube channel pushing COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

beyond.britannica.com/do-th...

Analysis - Vaccine skeptics claim a new CDC gotcha moment — but they haven’t got much

washingtonpost.com/politics...

[DawnRedwood in reply to AussieNeil]

I have never heard of David Martin OR his YouTube channel.

[mnmnewtons]

That's what I thought also 🤔

[mnmnewtons]

Last reply was to DawnRedwood.