I mean common cold has been around for a long time. How has the immune system not learned how to fight it?
In: Biology
I HAVE A LESSON PLAN JUST FOR THIS!!
Let’s pretend this smiley emoji is a common cold virus 🙂 that gets you sick. Once your immune system knows how to fight it off, it can recognize it, and 🙂 ever shows its face around you again, it’ll beat 🙂 up! So you dont get sick again!
But uh oh! You got your sister sick, and the cold changes a little while shes sick 😐. And your sister gets your brother sick, and it changes a little in him 😮. And then mom gets sick and it changes a little in her 😯.
Now your mom exposes you to the same cold that’s been going around the house; the one _you_ started. Let’s compare it with the one you had. 😯🙂 Not very similar are they? Maybe you and I, with our big brains, can see that it’s the same virus pulling a different face, but your immune system can’t. So you get sick again.
_But Professor Beauty, the flu is ALSO a virus, and it’s a lot like a cold, and we can get a flu shot so we dont get sick! Why can’t we get a Cold shot??_
Another great question! The Cold virus is SUPER good at changing itself, so by the time scientists made a vaccine for it, that version of the cold may not be a big threat anymore (as threatening as a cold is to the general population)
The flu is a bigger threat, and it’s _pretty_ good at changing itself, but not that good. The success of the flu vaccine is largely dependent on a bunch of scientists working year round to predict what the flu will “look like” (in keeping with our emoji model) and which versions will be the most dangerous/infectious.
Which is why sometimes you get the flu shot and still get sick! If scientists predict that the flu strain in a certain year will look like one of these 🙂😐😮, and predicts that these 2 🙂😐 are going to be the heavy hitters, theyll distribute 2 vaccines, one that covers just the MOST likely candidate 🙂 and one that covers BOTH 🙂😐 for the at risk population. If you get the 🙂, but then you’re exposed to 😮? You’re not immune to that one, and you’ll get sick.
At the end of the day, flu strains are similar enough that getting a vaccine, even for the wrong strain, can make the sickness from a different strain a little easier. (Not a question anyone asked, but an answer you got anyway)
And also, back to the original question, sometimes you get a disease like measles that just, wipes out your whole “Diseases I Know How To Fight Database” and you gotta start over. 🙁
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