About Vaccines

             I have my opinions on vaccines and you have yours. It is not the intent of this blog to ever tell you what to think. This blog hopes to present you with raw verifiable facts which are consistent with objective reality. The intent is to help you to think for yourself, rationally and critically, and, hopefully, in the context of this blog, that you allow yourself to be led by the Holy Spirit.

Do not base your opinions solely on what I say. Do not base your opinions solely on what anyone else says. Do not base your opinions solely on what any religious tradition says. Listen to all of them, but use your own mind, and read your Bible. Be like the Bereans (Acts 17:11), even on totally secular matters. Like they used to say about the Marvel Cinematic Universe: “It’s all connected.”

The discussion about vaccines in the United States has devolved into people taking sides based on their political leanings and has come to involve multiple issues: progressivism, conservatism, autism, Christian nationalism, distrust of government, distrust of the giant pharmaceutical companies, distrust of science in general, rejection of organized religion, some elements of bigotry, possible adverse side effects of vaccines, issues of vaccine effectiveness, the ethics of mandates, libertarianism, epidemiological community health concerns, availability of health resources, possible vaccine effects on autoimmune diseases, religious and/or ethical objections, exactly who will benefit most from a vaccine and whom they might harm, preventing pandemics, possible medically adverse ingredients in vaccines, ethical concerns over some methods of vaccine preparation, the concern of some that over-exposure to vaccines early in life might overwhelm the immune system, natural immunity vs vaccine immunity, live vs dead viral components in vaccines, issues of informed consent, racial differences in disease susceptibility. Did I leave any out?

Vaccines are biological preparations designed to stimulate the recipient’s immune system causing it to produce proteins called antibodies against a particular microorganism. The antibodies are, in effect, weapons produced by the body to protect itself against invaders.

Some vaccines are built from proteins or other parts of the organism being targeted. Other vaccines use the entire organism in either a dead or greatly weakened form. All are intended to cause the body to violently say “This is not me!” and to learn how to attack this particular “Not Me.”

The idea is that, if an exposure to this particular “Not Me” later occurs, the body will remember the prior attack and will jump into action to produce massive quantities of the weapons it needs.

This blog post is about the Coronavirus vaccine for COVID-19. New vaccines are needed each year because coronaviruses are RNA (ribonucleic acid) viruses and mutate more quickly than DNA (deoxy-ribonucleic acid) viruses. Most of the mutations carry no consequences for the human host but a few give the virus significant advantages in ease of transmission or in severity of the disease. This occurs as errors in copying the virus’ genetic information cause changes in the organism’s surface proteins. These changes result in the surface proteins being different enough from prior versions that the body’s immune system thinks that they are a “Not Me” that it has not seen before.

Because of this, the immune system essentially has to start over and, so, cannot make a quick kill. This means that there is no pre-existing immunity to the new variant even though it is still the same virus.

Vaccines have to be developed each year because of that year’s new variants, which usually arise in Asia or India and then spread worldwide. The vaccines which are developed are actually guesses or assumptions that the virus variants which arrive in the West will still be the same ones for which the vaccine was developed. This can account for why some of the vaccines are more effective than others. 

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            An aside: This process of the body's immune system attacking "Not Me" is what is involved in tissue rejection after organ transplants and also comes into play during pregnancy because the mother is "Me" and the child is "Not Me."