![[A picture of virus particles each in a different color to represent a different Sars-CoV-2 variant.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/08/virus-5231044_960_720.png)
Because the COVID-19 pandemic has been raging for almost 2 years now, most people have heard of the different viral variants that threaten the effectiveness of full protection with vaccines. This topic can be confusing to anyone who is not familiar with viruses or virology. This article will: 1) help you understand what viral variants are, and 2) explain where they come from. Viruses rely on host organisms (e.g., people and/or animals) to make more copies of themselves so that they can infect more hosts. However, hosts typically mount an immune response to clear a virus, which creates a challenge for viruses to overcome…
Tag: pfizer
A quick summary of the immune system and the COVID-19 vaccine
![[This image shows a person’s hand, and a syringe is being held between the person’s fingers. The needle of the syringe is pointed towards a round pathogen cell with small projections.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/03/virus-5768628_1920.jpg)
There are many strategies when it comes to developing a vaccine, but the idea behind all of them is similar. Vaccines are designed to pose a foreign invader, such as a virus or bacterium, to your adaptive immune system without causing you to be sick. Our immune systems are quite amazing, which also makes them quite complex. Here, we will focus only on a few aspects that are important for understanding vaccine development…