With all the hype and noise surrounding the politics and medicine of the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J jabs, it’s time to put together a concise discussion of how vaccines work, focusing on the Fauci Ouchy. I will try to stick purely to the science, leaving out issues of masking, social distancing, lockdowns, and so on. Those are related epidemiology, but don’t explain vaccine function and design. So, without further ado…
The concept of a vaccine had been folk wisdom for centuries, but no scientific basis was understood. In the eighteenth century, smallpox killed up to twenty percent of the population. Several investigators began a practice called variolation.
Physicians made small cuts in healthy people, and then put material from smallpox blisters in the cuts. This killed two or three percent of patients, but on balance, that was still a reduction in the death toll. George Washington used it to protect the bulk of his army, even though he lost some soldiers with the practice.
In 1796, using the common knowledge that milkmaids who got cowpox were immune from smallpox, Edward Jenner showed the world that infection with this mild disease created immunity to a killer.