Filenews 17 December 2021
There's a lot of talk, for a long, long time about vaccines related to the pandemic. The vaccination of the population is progressing, perhaps not at the pace that the extent of the problem imposes, but it is progressing and, indeed, in several countries it is approaching the percentage that ensures the public health and health of each individual, the earliest possible restoration of the economy and the "return to normality".
However, the percentage that falls short of making "herd immunity" makes this more difficult. This is where the most information, the scientific information based on facts, is needed
Fact 1: The only eradication of disease in human history was done through vaccination and, indeed, with the first vaccine in the history of medicine (although it had to give similar but clearly more than the battles that anti-COVID vaccines are currently fighting with their deniers). This was the vaccine against smallpox (heiferism) that won the "war" against the disease, resulting in its eradication, that is, its complete elimination around the world in 1980. It is worth noting that the word vaccine comes from the Latin word vacca (cow) hence the specific vaccination in our country prevailed under the name heiferism. And how is the cow involved in the story? The father of this first vaccine, the British pathologist Edward Jenner, observed that women who milked cows had blisters on their hands and were not sick with smallpox, a time when smallpox was, by analogy, what we now call a pandemic. Edward Jenner, took liquid from the bubbles and the first vaccine was a fact. The end of the 20th century also marked the end of the disease that had hitherto killed 10% of the population in the 19th century and 300-500 million people in the 20th century.
Fact 2: The first vaccine was followed by many other successful vaccines such as those against rabies, plague, diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis, polio, tetanus, with the result that either these diseases are "unknown words", or are of limited incidence and do not threaten human life as they used to.
Fact 3: From the very first vaccine there were reactions, which although they did not have the "help" of the globality of information were strong and calculable. Nevertheless, vaccines prevailed thanks to their effectiveness. Today, according to World Health Organization data, they prevent 100,000,000 diseases worldwide, prevent 2,500,000 deaths, offer long-term protection from many, many diseases, and help health systems around the world to have sufficient resources to deal with diseases for which there are no vaccines (all this without counting the numbers of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.
Fact 4: Since the time of the first vaccine a lot has changed. New diseases appeared, old diseases became more dangerous, life-threatening diseases multiplied, viruses mutated and developed more resistant strains, microbes developed resistance to antibiotics. The positive experience of vaccinations has shown that vaccines could also be the solution for diseases such as AIDS, cancer, malaria or even provide better solutions than those they have given so far for diseases such as tuberculosis. This perception created the favourable research and funding framework which leads mathematically to great scientific successes.
Fact 5:The vaccine-friendly research and funding framework gave scientists the opportunity to design and test in the laboratory new types of vaccines, and among these types were genome vaccines (DNA vaccines, mRNA vaccines) and recombinant carrier vaccines . Each of these vaccines was "good in theory" but in practice had to deal with various problems that needed to be solved before it could be tested on humans.
Fact 6: The "central idea" of all vaccines (classics and genomes), their "mechanism", is the introduction of a virus or bacterium protein into the human body in order to "educate" our immune system, to "record" it and to create antibodies that act as a shield in case of infection by the microbe (virus or bacterium) against which protection is sought. The result: a significant reduction in the likelihood of disease (many people do not get sick) or the lighter disease (some people will get sick but much lighter).
Fact 7: The mRNA vaccines, for which the first publication was made in the distant 1990 in the prestigious scientific journal Science before they became the vaccines of choice against the coronavirus, had to solve a series of problems that were from biological (effective introduction of mRNA into the recipient's cell) to technical (maintenance of the "fragile" mRNA). These problems were solved progressively, so the laboratories were ready in 2020 to face the first "challenge".
Fact 8: MRNA vaccines do not introduce into the body either the SARS-CoV-2 virus nor part of it, do not transmit an infectious disease and do not attach to the genome of the recipient. They introduce a codified "instruction" to create a protein like the one available in the spike of the virus, the tool that helps it adhere to the cell. This "artificial" spike becomes the antigen, the substance that causes the creation of antibodies, which are some of the molecules "killers" of the organism. When the real virus infects our organism, these molecules will now be there to prevent disease. As for the "messenger", the codified directive? This becomes the first victim of the process triggered. Destroyed.
Fact 9: MRNA vaccines were also favoured by the enormous advancement of computational technology. It was this technology that "cut the way", "cut time" and gave science the necessary data, the ones that allowed it to combine the conclusions of a very large number of clinical studies from all over the world and apply them. It was this technology that analyzed and communicated the genome of SARS-CoV-2, allowing science to demonstrate the quick reflexes required by the pandemic: A week after the notification of the genome of the virus, a vaccine prototype had been produced, and in a month clinical trials had begun.
