COVID-19 Vaccine Arrives in Texas
Science can save us – again
As devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, it is not the first or even the worst of infectious disease outbreaks. Smallpox scoured the world for hundreds of years until a vaccine became available and led to its global eradication in 1979. There was never a good treatment for the disease, just vaccine prevention. Before 1955, thousands of children afflicted with polio relied on an iron lung machine. Don’t believe in the magic of vaccination? Just ask your grandparents or an old friend what happened to polio. If you do not believe in the value of vaccination, you will have a hard time explaining how these diseases disappeared.
Vaccines have proven to be the most cost effective and lifesaving method to prevent infection, second only to the sanitization of water. Vaccinations have received a bad rap. They have even been mistakenly accused of causing the rise in autism. The action of vaccines can be simply explained.
When a virus, bacteria or other infectious agent enters the body, it responds by activating its immune system. In a complex, divinely structured defensive system, the body recognizes elements of the attacking agent and produces proteins called antibodies, which seek out and neutralize the attacker. In COVID-19 our immune system, our own antibody production leads to recovery in the great majority of cases, but it has not been enough for 260,000 people in our country and millions around the world who have died from the disease.
