Massively over the top paragraphs below because i genuinely find this interesting and wish i had more time to read up on it. (This is coming from like...nearly a decade old a level biology and a couple of podcasts/sciencey websites i read, so if anyone has more current and in depth knowledge in virology from their job or degree etc feel free to step in and save me from my ignorance)
From what i understand vaccines are either a weakened/dead strain of the virus in question (flu shot) or another virus so similar that the immune system thinks theyre the same disease and will react to the actual virus we want to stop (cowpox to smallpox)
Our bodies produce antibodies to fight disease. They do duck all at the time of actually getting the disease to stop you catching it, but if virus enters your body, something starts cranking these antibodies in trial and error until it works out a shape that fits the virus. Antibodies are all pretty much shaped like the letter Y though and its top two bits are like hands, which grab onto the virus. If the white blood cells see anything covered in antibodies they know its bad news and go in for the kill.
So the first time you get a disease theres a lot of time spent making the exact shape of antibody specialised for this virus but the SECOND time the virus moseys on into your body, your body is like
"its that little tit who made us too sick to go to the work xmas do last year! Get him lads!"
and we already have the 'factories' for that shape of antibodies in place, so it rattles them out much quicker. A bit like a car factory, once they have all the equipment to make a vauxhall corsa or whatever they can just start firing them out, but if they suddenly get told "we need to make ferraris" it might take a while to get a new factory with all the equipment and machine lines up and running. A chickenpox antibody would look at covid and just go "pfft. Not my job."
The flu gets round this by mutating and changing all the time (basically it puts on different glasses and a silly hat), so the science boffins have to basically guess (im sure theres a good analytical model rather than a pure guess) which version of the flu will be round at xmas time, and if they get it wrong you can still get the flu which is why some people still get sick.
And obviously there can be issues when some people's bodies are a bit paranoid and start labelling everything as an intruder - whacking antibodies on completely harmless cells like say, one's own liver, and then the white blood cells start attacking your own body - which is one reason why some people may have to take immunosuppressants - and then with the immune system knocked out theyre vulnerable to genuine threats
It is normal for some immunity loss over time for a lot of diseases (imagine the corsa factories havent needed to make a single corsa in 2 years, body's just like nah clear off we're gonna close most of you and build some overpriced student flats here instead) The weird thing about covid is that the body is maybe shutting down the antibody 'factories' within like 2/3 months which is ridiculouslyquick ???
So people could get it again and body would have to start from scratch making the covid antibody shape again.
I know its a completely new virus so its all up in the air, and my science knowledge is nowhere near deep enough to know WHY antibodies being lost so fast, but i know it means "herd immunity" is not happening now or in the near future and just infecting everyone will not help at all.
We also dont know how quickly it mutates - though it must be slower than flu or we'd have noticed changes by now since this debacle has been going on since last december.
Hopefully worst case scenario we'll just all have to have semi regular "booster" vaccine shots once they have working vaccines, and eventually it'll be like polio and measles where so many people are vaccinated that it can't really spread easily and it calms down. Or maybe they'll find another coronavirus very similar, base a vaccine on that, but the antibodies for that virus stick around longer than for covid? Idk this entire paragraph is speculation, but yeah.
TL;DR barricade the fort with Smegs and we'll eat post apocalyptic slop and discuss naming the german shepard.
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All a bit 
despite the thread title).
