You've probably heard about Corona vaccines or babies getting vaccinated, but do you know how vaccines work? Many of us get vaccinated against diseases like small pox, polio, etc, when we are still babies. Man, thank God vaccines exist.
Consider that you are the president of a country exposed to terrorist attacks? Well, if you don't give them the country to rule, you will try to defend the territory. How will you do this? Soldiers —trained soldiers.
In my article how T and B cells work, I point that each antibody carried by a B cell is suited for particular antigen. What if there is no B cell for a new type of pathogen like corona virus?
The lethal disease breaks out and the result if appalling. We try to fight it back. We need those trained soldiers.
A vaccine is what which trains the soldiers (white blood cells).
A vaccine has to stimulate the war conditions. It is a military training, and like all good trainings, there should be a balance between harsh and soft conditions. If conditions are too soft, your soldiers will be weak and useless at war; if they are too harsh, your soldiers die (or you die).
So researchers sweat to design something similar enough to the pathogen to produce a substantial response from the immune system, but weak enough not to kill you. As such, vaccinated people can have illness symptoms —because they are actually sick —then have their soldiers figure out how to fight the simulation.
When your soldiers understand how to deal with terrorists, T cells (the generals) order and subsidise the training of soldiers particularly suited for those terrorists. The soldiers then occupy your blood stream and almost become omnipresent.
Consequently, when you contract a disease, corona for example, your body is flooded with soldiers ready to deal with it. Your country is safe and happy ending —even though you don't thank those who did the vaccine.
Good to know
Before the first vaccine against small pox was invented, roughly 30 percent of people who contracted the virus died. Physicians used a method called variolation to improve the effectiveness of our immune system. The method consisted of inhaling material from small pox pustules. What a disgusting precursor for vaccines.
The first vaccine was created in 1796 by Dr. Edward Jenner, who realised that the cow's milkmaids had pustules but did not get fiercely sick. From the cowpox lesion of a milkmaid, he "poisoned" an eight-year-old boy. The boy survived developed immunity against small pox. That was the world's first vaccine.
Source: Elegant Defense by Matt Richtell.