The answer's complicated. As Dr Kylie Quinn of the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at Melbourne's RMIT University explains, the trick to vaccines is to look for people who've been infected and recovered. If you can see that in the population, you can be reasonably confident you can replicate it with a vaccine.
Most people with COVID-19 have some degree of immunity after they recover, just like most of us do against chicken pox. But this isn't true for all diseases—you can catch malaria repeatedly, and HIV attacks the very immune system designed to protect you.
Another complicating factor is that viruses—like every other life form—mutate and evolve, and some are better at it than others. The British Medical Bulletin published research in 2001 in which the genetic variation in a single patient HIV case was equal to those found in common cold cases across North America for an entire year.
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Denne historien er fra July 2021-utgaven av Reader's Digest UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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EVERY SECOND COUNTS: TIPS TO WIN THE RACE AGAINST TIME
Do you want to save 1.5 seconds every day of your life? According to the dishwasher expert at the consumer organisation Choice, there’s no need to insert the dishwashing tablet into the compartment inside the door.
May Fiction
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Sam Quek: If I Ruled The World
Sam Quek MBE is an Olympic gold medalwinning hockey player, team captain on A Question of Sport and host of podcast series Amazing Starts Here
Stand Tall, Ladies
Shorter men may be having their moment, but where are the tall women?