Russell's Teapot issue 4

Since the news that an effective vaccine had
been developed to protect people from contracting
Covid-19, the world became fascinated
by how it was done. Many people questioned
how the developers managed to condense a
process that would usually take years into just
10 months.
To understand how the vaccines were made
so quickly, we need to understand the human
immune system. When a person is infected
by some kind of pathogen, the body responds
by sending three diverse types of white blood
cells to stop it from becoming a serious threat.
Macrophages digest germs and leave behind
antigens, B-lymphocytes produce antibodies
and attack the left-over pieces of the virus,
and T-lymphocytes attack the infected cells. A
vaccine gives people immunity without having
to develop the disease, by providing the white
blood cells with a weakened protein of the virus.
The white blood cells will therefore try and
destroy the foreign substance. They remember
the shape so that in the event that the virus
infects the person, it will be easier to fight off.
An area of concern for the corona vaccine is
how the process of making a vaccine takes an
exceptionally long time, so it is difficult to feel
secure when there is the fear that the development
stage has been rushed. However, after
having experiences with several types of coronaviruses
(the Sars coronavirus and the Mers
coronavirus), scientists have been more prepared
for the outbreak of Covid-19. Witnessing
the effects of having such a slow response to
the Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016, prompted
scientists to develop a plan for the next big outbreak
of a disease by taking a cold virus from a
chimpanzee and engineering it to become the
backbone for a vaccine that could be manipulated
to fight off various kinds of diseases. Now,
it has been modified to prevent people from
contracting Covid-19.
Some are sceptical; it still seems like a short
amount of time to develop a vaccine as well as
passing it through trials. However, the vaccines
have been tested in three phases: testing for
safety, testing if the vaccine’s response is correct
and testing that it actually provides protection.
The Oxford vaccine has been tested on
30,000 volunteers in the third phase, and Pfizer
have addressed some of the concerns, confirming
that their mRNA vaccine, a relatively new
concept, does not change human DNA or have
the ability to cause someone to contract Covid-19.
Overall, the vaccine has passed through
the same clinical trials as other licenced medicines.
A potential consequence of having the vaccine
developed this quickly is that we have not seen
how well the vaccine protects against the new
variants from Kent, South Africa or Brazil and
the question was raised of whether they could
render our current vaccines ineffective. Although
this is a possibility, the proteins in the
vaccines are quite large, so for the new variants
to be unaffected, they would have to have mutated
a lot. However, this does not change the
fact that the vaccine does not protect people
against the newer variants as effectively. There
is still the possibility that the vaccine could be
redesigned by synthesising a new piece of DNA
or RNA and inserting it into the original vaccine
so it is unlikely that the work put into the
current vaccines will have been for nothing.
By Katie Pietroni