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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2321 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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ELI5. Why many vaccines against diseases that can infect in tiny airborne droplets must be administered via injection which creates noticeable discomfort and, in case of some, very noticeable scar?

Agree with Ren, but an even more direct cause is "because they seem to work better". Biology and especially the immune system are just very complicated, and it's very difficult to predict a priori what will work. Convincing-sounding rationales for claims about drugs, even ones that convince experts, fail all the time, and testing them is very laborious, which is a big part of why drug development is so insanely expensive. And as a result nasal vaccines have been attempted many times, including for covid, and (usually) aren't as effective as injected vaccines.

This also means that maybe, in the future, nasal vaccines will re-emerge, or even become dominant, as technology and our understanding of the immune system improves! Probably not, but who knows.

The real disease is potent and can infect cells & multiply very fast if not actively stopped by your immune system, so even minimal contact with a droplet can spread through your body.

The vaccine is killed or otherwise incapitated, so it can't really infect & multiply. Instead you need to inject a relatively large amount directly into the bloodstream to trick your immune system into doing something about it. If you swallowed it, the immune system would likely correctly register it as harmless dead matter going through your stomach and being dissolved.

Also, the main noticeable discomfort comes from the immune reaction itself, so it's kind of unavoidable.

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