Hey there! Have you ever wondered how vaccines work? It’s a really cool and important topic. Let’s dive in and learn all about it!
There are many reasons why people get sick. Some illnesses are caused by tiny invaders called germs. For example, if you’ve ever had a sore throat, it might have been caused by germs. Doctors often give a special medicine called an antibiotic to help fight these germs. Antibiotics are used when you’re already sick to help you get better.
Vaccines are a different kind of medicine. Unlike antibiotics, you get a vaccine before you get sick. You take it when you’re healthy to stop germs from making you sick in the first place. But how does that work? Let’s find out!
A long time ago, there was a terrible disease called smallpox. It made people very sick with sores and high fevers. But then, something interesting happened. People who worked with cows, like farmers, didn’t seem to get smallpox. Scientists discovered that these people got a different, milder disease called cowpox from the cows they worked with. Cowpox wasn’t deadly, and it somehow protected them from smallpox.
Doctors tried giving people small doses of cowpox to see if it would protect them from smallpox. And guess what? It worked! This was the first vaccine, and it helped stop smallpox from spreading.
Our bodies have tiny fighters called immune cells. When germs attack, these cells learn how to fight them. It’s like learning secret moves to defeat the germs. When someone gets sick with cowpox, their immune cells learn how to fight it. Then, if smallpox comes along, the immune cells are ready to fight it off because they already know the moves!
Not all germs have a weaker version like cowpox. So, scientists have to create vaccines in different ways. For example, with the new coronavirus, scientists made a vaccine using just a small piece of the virus. This helps our immune cells learn how to fight the virus without making us sick.
Thanks to the hard work of scientists, we have vaccines that protect us from many diseases. When enough people get vaccinated, it helps stop the spread of diseases, like the coronavirus. That’s something to celebrate!
So, next time you hear about vaccines, you’ll know how they help keep us healthy. Stay curious and keep learning about the amazing world around us!
Germ Detective: Go on a “germ detective” mission in your home or classroom. With the help of an adult, use a magnifying glass to look at different surfaces like door handles, tables, and toys. Discuss where you think germs might be hiding and why it’s important to wash your hands regularly. Can you think of other ways to keep germs away?
Immune Cell Superheroes: Draw your own superhero immune cell! Think about what special powers your superhero might have to fight off germs. Share your drawing with your classmates and explain how your superhero helps keep the body healthy. What kind of germs does your superhero fight against?
Vaccine Role Play: With a group of friends or family members, act out the process of how a vaccine works. One person can be the “germ,” another the “vaccine,” and others the “immune cells.” Show how the vaccine teaches the immune cells to recognize and fight the germ. How does the body react when the real germ tries to attack?
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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(electronic ringing)(electronic chiming) – Hi, Doug! – Hi, Raj! – I have a question for you. How do vaccines work? – Ooh, that’s a great question and so important. There are lots of different reasons people get sick. There are many different kinds of sicknesses or diseases. Diseases caused by germs can be stopped in different ways. For example, strep throat is caused by germs. If you’ve ever had strep throat, you were probably given a medicine called an antibiotic. That’s one that harms the microscopic germs causing your strep throat, but that doesn’t harm you. Antibiotics are medicines you take because you’re sick. In other words, the germs have already entered your body and are making you not feel well.
Vaccines are a totally different kind of medicine to fight against germs. The big difference between an antibiotic and a vaccine is this: A vaccine is something you take before you ever get sick in the first place. You get a vaccine while you’re healthy, not sick. In other words, a vaccine is a type of medicine that stops germs from making you sick to begin with. Now you might be wondering how can a medicine keep you from getting sick in the first place? Before I say anything more, what do you think? Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.
Okay. You ready? Well, to understand this, it’s helpful to know the story of how vaccines were invented in the first place. For thousands of years, a disease called smallpox was one of the most terrible. When someone caught it, it gave them sores all over their bodies and a really high fever. And it was often deadly. Doctors tried many different ways to stop it, but none of these worked. Then some people discovered something really interesting. People who worked with cows, like farmers and their helpers, weren’t getting smallpox at all. It’s like they had some secret power against smallpox.
When scientists started to look into this, they found out that people who worked on farms did get sick with something else, a different sickness, one they were catching from cows that they milked every day, a disease called cowpox. Cowpox had some similarities with smallpox, but also some important differences. Cowpox gave you sores like smallpox, but just a few on your hand. It also gave you a fever just like smallpox did, but only a slight fever, and most important of all, cowpox was almost never a deadly disease the way smallpox was. Catching cowpox was somehow helping these farm workers’ bodies fight off the much deadlier smallpox.
Now at the time, all of this was being discovered, scientists didn’t even have microscopes powerful enough to see the germs that cause cowpox and smallpox, but they realized that whatever was causing cowpox was like a weaker version of what was causing smallpox. So doctors tried giving small doses of cowpox to people who weren’t sick. They wanted to find out if having cowpox would stop people from ever getting smallpox. And it worked! People who were given a dose of cowpox never got sick with smallpox. Giving people small doses of cowpox was the first type of vaccine.
In fact, even the word vaccine has something to do with this incredible story. It comes from the word “vacca,” the Latin word for cow. The cowpox-smallpox vaccine was amazing. The number of people getting sick with smallpox started to go way down. In fact, it worked so well that the smallpox disease eventually disappeared from the world entirely. Now, no one gets smallpox anymore, all thanks to the vaccine.
Now that we have more powerful microscopes, we’ve discovered that there are so many different kinds of germs. We’ve also learned more about what happens when germs get inside a person’s body. Each of our bodies contains tiny disease-fighting cells called immune cells. When a certain kind of germ attacks your body for the first time, your immune cells have to learn how to fight that kind of germ. It’s as if they have to figure out the secret moves that work against that germ. For example, when someone gets sick with cowpox, their immune cells learn to fight the cowpox germ. They learn the secret moves that fight cowpox. Then if smallpox comes along, the immune cells are ready. Since smallpox is a lot like cowpox, the immune cells can use the secret moves they already learned and fight off those germs before the person gets sick.
Not every germ has a weaker version, like the smallpox-cowpox story. So how can we get vaccines that fight against all those germs? If there isn’t a weaker version of a germ, scientists have to figure out how to make a weaker version of the germ. The new coronavirus vaccine is a great example of how scientists try new ways to make vaccines. Rather than using the whole coronavirus germ, scientists are able to create a small piece of the coronavirus germ and use that in the vaccine. Injecting people with that small part of the germ is enough to teach someone’s immune cells how to fight against the germ without making them sick. So that way, if the coronavirus shows up, the immune cells are ready to fight it off.
Thanks to the incredibly hard work of a lot of scientists who stayed curious and didn’t give up, we now have a vaccine for the coronavirus, and once enough people are vaccinated, this pandemic can finally come to an end, and that’s something worth celebrating! That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Raj, for asking it. Now for the next episode, I reached into my question jar and picked out three questions sent into me that I’m thinking about answering next. When this video is done playing, you’ll get to vote on one. You can choose from: Why do beavers build dams? How is soap made? Or why do some people get carsick? So submit your vote when the video is over. I want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious, and see you next week!
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