Vaccinations are effective and offer good protection against many serious diseases. Those who are vaccinated are more likely to be protected against a specific disease. The germs in vaccines can be killed or weakened, but they do not cause disease. Your immune system attacks the harmless forms of bacteria or viruses that cause the disease to which you are immunized with a vaccine by producing antibodies to fight it off. If the vaccine kills the bacteria, weakens them, or breaks them down into smaller pieces, it can trigger an immune response that can make you very sick.
Your immune system reacts to vaccines in much the same way it does when it is struck by disease by making antibodies. Antibodies destroy vaccine germs like pathogens, like an exercise. Your immune system preserves the memory of the disease against which you are vaccinated so that when a vaccinated person is confronted with the disease again years later, he or she is ready to fight it off and prevent the development of an infection.
Our immune system reacts to bacterial and viral proteins by developing tools to respond to future infections and pathogens. The immune system preserves the memory of the pathogens it encounters, and when exposed to the real thing, it produces more antibodies to ward off certain diseases. Vaccines train the immune system to recognize and fight pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. Certain molecules of the pathogen are introduced into the body to trigger an immune reaction. Vaccines can use whole viruses or bacteria to teach our bodies to build immunity to a pathogen.
The molecules are called antigens and are found in viruses and bacteria. Vaccines contain weakened or inactive parts of a particular organismic antigen that trigger an immune response in the body. Some newer vaccines contain blueprints for how the antigen can be produced.
Some types of vaccines contain fragments of a protein unique to the virus. For example, most research on COVID-19 vaccines involves generating a response to the part of the protein that causes the disease. When the system recognizes the protein, but not all of it, the body will respond by establishing natural defenses against infection with infection. Our body recognizes these proteins and does not build up T lymphocytes or B lymphocytes in order to remember the virus that causes COVID-19 if we become infected in the future. Instead, our cells make copies of the proteins themselves, destroying the vaccine’s genetic material.
Different types of vaccines act to provide protection in different ways and with each type of vaccine, the body will have a stockpile of memory T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes to remember and fight the virus in the future. Please note that It is possible that after vaccination a person becomes infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 or that the vaccine does not have sufficient time to provide protection.
Vaccination is the safest and most commonly used way to gain immunity to the bacteria and viruses to which your body is exposed. Vaccines are designed to prevent or treat a disease before it is caught. They are our best protection against infections that have killed many people in the past.
Vaccines work by educating your body on how to recognize certain dangerous pathogens so that your immune system is ready to fight them in the future. Vaccines introduce small parts of weakened or dead germs (so-called antigens) into our bodies. Antigens trigger the body’s natural immune response and cause disease. As a result, the body’s immune system learns to recognize the sugary coatings that disguise the bacteria as harmful and attacks them and their carriers as soon as they enter the body.