RDN's Lucifer (nerthos)'s status on Thursday, 23-Feb-17 08:59:19 UTC
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@sim A vaccine works by building a resistance to a strain of disease by exposing the body to a severely weakened sample of that disease. Like learning to defend yourself from knives while wearing padding and with a rubber knife. Your body recognizes the threat and creates defenses without being in real risk. This severely strenghtens immune response to the disease, but it doesn't always make you completely immune, that only happens with certain diseases that you can't contract twice. With others your immune system can be still overwhelmed. It's often given to vulnerable people and children because they're the ones most likely to be unable to fend the disease proper just with their base immune system.
If people don't take the vaccines, then the exposition to disease you have to deal with is much, much higher. Like how a lead suit will protect you from a few rads but you'll still die if you sit on a plutonium brick.
