How vaccines work: how a shot trains your immune system
Weakened, killed or just a piece: what is inside a vaccine
A vaccine has one job: show your B cells the shape of a germ, without the danger of the germ. There are three classic ways to do it, and the way a vaccine is made changes how many doses it needs.
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1
Your B cells had to meet the measles shape to make memory. But the real virus can make you very sick. So a vaccine must carry the shape and leave the danger out.
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2
The danger of a virus is that it gets into your cells and copies itself, again and again. Its shape is only on its outside. So vaccine makers can keep one and take away the other.
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