I understand a vaccine, a small dose of ‘x’ is given so your body can realise it’s foreign and learn how to fight it when the real thing comes.
But surely with a penicillin dose not being a vaccine,the body now has both it AND the foreign body to deal with? How does it’kill’ the intruder and not detrimental to the immune system?
Edit; Added words for clarification.
Edit 2; Thanks all, I have an understanding now!
In: 6
Vaccine is a nerfed version of a virus, which is a living thing, or at least it has DNA, specialized components, and it tries to “talk” to body’s cells and pretend to be a legitimate part of the body. Immune system works by detecting this behavior. Virus is a bit like Impostor in Among Us.
Penicillin is an antibiotic, it is not living thing, but a much simpler chemical. It does not do anything as involved as a virus, it just tries to have a chemical reaction with anything it encounters. As it happens, that reaction works with bacteria and kills them, but it does not happen with human cells. So penicillin does the job of the immune system, but faster. (while the vaccine trains the immune system).
Immune system can decide that penicillin is a threat, i.e. patient gets a penicillin allergy. But it is rare, and even if it happens its symptoms are usually way more mild than bacteria infection that penicillin kills.
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