We live in our environment that is ripe with germs. Wherever you go, the air you breathe in, the surfaces you touch have millions of bacteria and germs. You can never guess how many germs enter your body, and when you are more susceptible and fall prey to a harmful organism, you can fall severely sick or even lose a life. Vaccines are an important part of life that helps keep our most vulnerable safe. AFC Urgent Care Stoneham provides routine vaccines, flu shots, and vaccines recommended for travel. Call us today to get availability, and visit us to get vaccinated.

Now you have undoubtedly heard how both children and adults must be up to date with their essential vaccines. Ever wondered why?

How do vaccines work?

The reason is that vaccines contain some parts of a particular organism or what we refer to as an antigen. These parts are weak in-state but can trigger a response from your immune in the body. If considering the present health crises of COVID-19, we will see that vaccines and other diseases include blueprints.

These blueprints produce antigens instead of the antigen being present itself. However, whether a vaccine contains a blueprint or the antigen itself helps the person who takes the shot to prevent developing the disease.

The vaccine will have a weakened version of the antigen, which will prompt your immune system to respond in the same way it does in the first reaction to the real pathogen. It is quite common to take multiple doses of a vaccine to complete the course of protection. Sometimes, you have to take the second shots weeks apart, while in many cases, you may have to take the next shots even months apart.

The reason why you need that time gap is to allow long-lived antibodies to produce inside you. At the same time, they produce developed memory cells to train your body in fighting against the culprit organism. They build pathogen memories inside as quickly as possible so that your body can fight against the disease effectively whenever you experience future exposure.

Herd Community

You may have heard of the “herd community” as “population immunity” as well. In effect, this is a term for indirect protection against severe disease, and it happens when medical experts immunize a nation with a vaccine. It also occurs when the population itself develops immunity through a previous infection.

Take the example of WHO. It is currently an active supporter of the herding community through the vaccines for COVID-19. These vaccines will contain the spread of the deadly virus through populations and curb the widespread infections and deaths taking place.

The ideal herd community in the fight against the current pandemic is through the vaccine. Exposing the populations to the pathogens causing this deadly disease is not the right option.