Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr
From what I understand, this "vaccine" works very differently than all other vaccines. Some doctors say that it's technically not a vaccine.
While vaccines give you immunity from contracting the virus, this one prevents the virus from using your body to replicate itself. If the virus can't replicate, it can't make you sick.
But it sounds to me, and I am not a doctor or scientist, that you may still contract the virus but it can't hurt you. So if you are carrying the virus, you can possibly transmit it to others. It seems to me that once everyone that wants to be vaccinated is, then we can stop wearing masks.
If there is a doctor or scientist on this forum that can explain this better or contradict what I'm saying, please do so.
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The question you ask is a wise one. Immunity is complex. Every year a better understanding of the multiple pathways by which we fight off disease is gained. Vaccines AKA immunizations, work because they expose your body to the disease causing organism, or some part of the disease organism. This exposure triggers your body to create two kinds of weapons to attack the disease. One kind is antibodies, this is the kind most often measured to see if you are "immune" to the disease. But there are also other responses mostly involving creating cells that attack the organism in one way or another, the most common are t-cells.
Some vaccines actually use the entire organism either weakened or killed. Polio and chicken pox are examples. Some vaccines instead have lab created proteins which are mimics of critical proteins from the disease organisms, Hepatitis B for example. The two new mRNA vaccines take a third approach. Instead of making the critical protein in the lab then injecting it, they have your body make the critical protein. The effect is the same.. your body is exposed to a foreign protein [in this case a spike protein].
Don't get too focused on contract vs replicate. For a virus, or bacteria, to make you ill there must be enough disease organism to produce symptoms. Once you are protected by a vaccine you can still have that germ get into your body, over and over. Once the germ is in you it is a race to see whether the germ can multiply rapidly enough to make you ill versus your body's immune system hunting down and killing the germ before it reaches the level of clinical illness. So a fully "immune" person can still have the germ enter their body and begin to multiply or replicate.
Interestingly each time you are exposed to the illness, it is expected that will act as a natural booster. There is no data yet that can tell with certainly how long a person who had clinical Covid will have protection from the disease. And similarly for someone who has been vaccinated.
People who say "I've had Covid so I can't catch it" are 100% wrong if by catch you mean have Covid enter your body and replicate. People who on this website tell you that you will need a booster have no science to support that, yet. People who tell you that you will not need a booster have no science to support that, yet.
If the CDC in a year declares no boosters are necessary, they may come back a few years, or months later and say boosters are necessary. That would be because the data changed. One reason it may change is once there is less circulating Covid we all will have fewer community exposures, thus fewer booster events.