Thought of the Day - July 27 2021 - What Do Vaccines Do?

I have had a few people say that as they have been vaccinated thus they are immune to getting infected by the SARS Coronavirus. At first I was thinking it was just semantics, but when I ask it is obvious they really did not know what the vaccines they are taking actually do.

In short, pharma companies have never suggested that vaccines stop you from getting infected. If you get exposed to SARS-CoV-2, you can get infected. What vaccines, hopefully, do is precondition your body to more effectively fight the infection.

First, in the near term anyway, you already have the specific SARS antibodies kicking around. In addition, as your body already knows the blueprint, you can rapidly make more antibodies. This means you can effectively kill and shed the infection before it gets serious. Even more significantly, your body has far less chance of killing itself in the process (e.g. from cytokine storms and the like). The net effect is when you are infected you are less likely to have significant symptoms, and far less likely these symptoms will be serious or life-threatening.

I also wanted to mention this as the corollary means you can still get infected and therefore you can also still spread the virus. While your viral load should be less, and your infectious duration shorter, as you are more likely to have mild or no symptoms, you are far more likely to socialize compared to having serious or life-threatening issues. As we have talked about before, not good news for tourist destinations.

Cheers

Cliff