Immunology 101 and the Beauty of Vaccines

Prof. Akiko Iwasaki — @VirusesImmunity, please follow her on twitter.

One beauty of vaccines — and one of their great advantages over our body’s natural reaction to infections — is that their antigens can be designed to focus the immune response on a virus’s Achilles heel (whatever that may be).

Another advantage is that vaccines allow for different kinds and different doses of adjuvants — and so, for calibration and fine-tuning that can help boost and lengthen immune responses.

The immune response generated against a virus during natural infection is, to some degree, at the mercy of the virus itself. Not so with vaccines.

— Scared That Covid-19 Immunity Won’t Last? Don’t Be

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