Pfizer and Moderna
Unorthodox idea: The human body can act as its own vaccine factory.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna inoculations work by injecting people with customized genetic code that instructs human cells to make key virus proteins to induce an immune response.
Introduce mRNA instructions for cells to make a portion of a virus, which the immune system recognizes as a threat and counters with a protective response. No actual virus is involved in the process.
The appeal of mRNA vaccines – and a key secret to their speed – is they are plug-and-play: The mRNA vehicle does not need to change, only the specific genetic instructions it carries. If the virus changes or mutates, the details of the instructions can be altered accordingly.
