a letter to my cousin lynn

Dear cousin Lynn,

You wrote the following on facebook:
Lynn L.
"PS... I want one person to describe in detail the “science” of it all!
I’m a college educated person who learned how to read scientific articles and be able to discern the the fact from the fiction!"

As no one else had stepped up to the podium, please allow me to do so.
Here is the science. The vaccine contains the mRNA which is encoded with the identity of the protein spike that SARS-CoV-2 uses to inject into our cells. 

That piece of mRNA allows our cells to manufacture copies of that protein so that our immune system can recognize and attack that protein. 

That means that the next time our immune system encounters that protein in our body (as in when the virus has invaded), our immune system is ready for it and can counteract, to keep it out of our cells.

Now, if our body is invaded by a large number of virus entities, then our immune system is not able to block all of them, which can result in a mild case of COVID (COronaVirus Infectious Disease). 

However, thanks to the vaccine having prepped our body for such an attack, we would not end up on a ventilator fighting for breath on our way to death. 

Those who do not have the vaccine have that scenario as a very real possibility in their future. So, I advise everyone to get the vaccine. 

Death by coughing is a painful way to leave this Earth.

Please bear in mind that I have a PhD in Analytical Chemistry. 

Now retired, I have 24 years of teaching general, organic, and biochemistry to future nurses, rad techs, and others in the medical field.
I have researched this very question, as well as attended some excellent lectures on this new type of vaccine. 

Heretofore, all vaccines worked by injecting the actual virus, usually in a dead or deactivated form, into the body so the body's immune system would recognize the actual intruder.
The vaccines being used to prevent COVID are a new type, using mRNA to allow our own body to make JUST THE SPIKE PROTEIN, not the entire virus. 

(You may recall from biochemistry that mRNA contains the recipe for a single protein, thus our body contains many different mRNA molecules for building the many different proteins (hemoglobin, collagen, keratin, insulin, to name but a few) that our body needs all the time.)

Because we are not exposed to the entire COVID-causing virus, the new type of vaccine cannot assure us complete immunity from that disease. 

However, this new type of vaccine does provide our immune system with a preemptive measure by allowing a recognition as "enemy" for any entity with that spike protein attached to it.

Forewarned is forearmed, right? Getting the vaccine is the best way to become forearmed against SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2).