The way that the BioNTech(Pfizer) and Moderna vaccines work is to mimic the way the virus behaves.
Without wishing to teach anyone's Grandmother to suck eggs, it might be worth revisiting the biology.
- SARS-Cov-2 is a virus - a bundle of RNA, wrapped up in fat, with a protein spike sticking out of it.
- RNA can't replicate itself so it needs a cell like the ones we have to make more of it. To get into our cells the protein spike has to find a receptor - which it does in the ACE2 proteins on the surface of some of our cells.
- Once it's latched on, the RNA inside the fatty pouch is then injected into those cells, and those cells then do the job that the virus itself cannot do, by replicating the RNA instructions to create another bundle of RNA wrapped up in fat. The injected cell will then burst open, releasing the newly built bundles of RNA, wrapped in fat, with protein spikes sticking out of them, to now go forth and multiply.
- Once it has done this once, it will do this as many times as it is able to do before the host body mounts a sufficient response to stop it.
- Sometimes the body will not mount a sufficient response...
- Other times it will, but only after significant damage to our heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, intestinal tract, or even brain have happened - please remember that this is a disease we have lived with for just a year. It is already reasonably well documented that there are long-term effects in something like 10% of those infected.
- It is not death or not death - it is also long-term significant health issues, and that is considerably less an age thing.
Your body will stop this reaction by recognising that spike protein - the most obvious way of imagining it is like we see it as an abusive partner, you kick them out, change the locks, they can't get in. The key no longer fits.
The really clever part of the mRNA vaccines is that they latch on to the ACE2 receptors, inject themselves into the cell, and then make the cell replicate
just the spike protein part of the virus. The cells then burst open and spills
just the spike protein into the body - our immune response recognises it as a threat, and mounts a response to it. It sees the keys, it changes the locks.
I'd like to think when this is over we could start giving a bit more love and appreciation to the proper heroes here - this virus was genome sequenced in March and we've seen the first inoculations in December - it is a f**king miracle really.
