Knowing how our immune system fights illness helps us understand how different COVID vaccine types work. When germs and viruses enter our body, they attack it and multiply. We call this process a spreading infection. However, our body’s immune system has several strategies to fight back. The key is in the dual composition of our blood. Our red cells carry oxygen to our tissues and organs. While our white, immune cells fight infections.
The Three Ways Our White Blood Cells Fight Infections
Centers for Disease Control explains our white blood cell army has three divisions:
1… Microphage cells swallow up and digest germs, and dead or dying cells. All that remains are their antigens which our body destroys with antibodies.
2… B-lymphocytes are defensive white blood cells producing antibodies that attack any remaining pieces of virus the microphages missed.
3… T-lymphocytes are the third arm of our defensive strategy. They attack cells in the body that have already been infected.
It can take several days, even weeks for this process to complete the first time we have a new type of infection. During this period we are at risk of permanent damage, even death. Fortunately our body retains a few t-lymphocytes after recovery. These ‘memory cells’ can then take action quickly if we encounter the same virus again.
How Different COVID Vaccine Types Work in Context
There are three COVID vaccine types standing by to protect our bodies:
1… mRNA vaccines (BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna) contain genetic code from the virus that teaches our immune system to fight the infection, by producing B- and T-lymphocytes
2… Protein Subunit vaccines (Anhui Zhifei, Longcom Biopharmaceutical) contain harmless protein from the virus. Our immune system identifies this as alien and builds B- and T-lymphocyte cells to destroy it.
2… Vector vaccines (University of Oxford, AstraZeneca, Sputnik) contain a weakened, third party virus with COVID genetic material inserted. This makes cells unique to COVID-19, triggering production of B- and T-lymphocytes.
Our immune system will know how to defend against a COVID-19 infection in all three cases, and hopefully terminate it with B- and T-lymphocyte white blood cells. And that, in very basic terms is how different COVID vaccine types work.
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Preview Image: Types of White Blood Cell
