How to Explain the Covid-19 Vaccine as a Story

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE COVID-19 VACCINE

AS A STORY by Gavin McCormack

The Immune System

It’s first important to understand how your immune system works. Basically, your immune system attacks anything foreign to your body. If it notices a virus or a bacteria or anything that it doesn’t recognize, it launches an attack to defeat it.

If it’s fighting a virus, for example, it takes time to prepare its army. It has to figure out what part of the virus to attack and prepare its warriors and weapons. That can take a few days. Meanwhile, the virus is replicating and expanding. (This is when you can feel that you might be about to get sick, but you’re not sick yet!)

Once your body defeats any virus, it remembers it. Your immune system has a memory, and if you run into that virus again, your memory cells say, “I remember this virus from before, and I have the weapons and warriors already prepared.” Your body uses its past experience to demolish the virus before it can make you sick. (This is what happens every time you catch a cold.)

Now that we know about immune memory, let’s talk about the vaccine. Scientists looked at the COVID virus and saw a weak spot in its structure. It was a particular protein, the perfect place for your immune army to launch an attack.

A New Protein Arrives

We will call this protein, the ‘weak-spot protein.’

So scientists examined the structure of the ‘weak-spot’ protein in COVID and made an instruction booklet on how to make it that your body can read.

This instruction booklet is the ‘vaccine,’ and that is what is injected into our bodies. Let me explain.

The vaccine contains no actual part of the virus. It has only the instructions on how to make the ‘weak-spot’ protein. So, you can’t get infected with COVID from the vaccine. Your body is simply injected with the instructions on how to make this particular protein.

Once injected, Your cells read these instructions and say, “Thanks for the new information; I’ll start making the protein right away.” So your cells can now make a bunch of the ‘weak-spot’ proteins. (Not the virus, just the weakest part.)

The Great Immune Battle

Your immune system immediately notices this new protein you’re producing and quickly gathers your immune troops and says, “Hey guys, we have an invasion on our hands; gather the army.” And it starts attacking the protein. So you destroy the weak-spot protein. No worries; the vaccine can’t infect you. It’s just a protein, not the virus.

Remember that your body hasn’t seen this protein before, so it takes a little while to gather the military. Then it launches an all-out war against the ‘weak-spot’ protein. You might experience fever, chills, or muscle soreness as vaccine side effects. This is proof that your body is bombarding the ‘weak-spot’ protein.

Immune Memory is the Key

Once defeated, and it doesn’t take long because it’s just a protein and not a virus, your memory cells ‘remember’ the ‘weak-spot’ protein. Your body’s cells will remember exactly how to destroy it.

So, what if … a few months later, you accidentally forget to wash your hands and the COVID virus enters your body. Your body has never seen the virus before, but it has seen that ‘weak-spot’ protein that’s on the outside of the virus. Your immune memory