All You Wanted To Know About Coronavirus Vaccine Science But Were Afraid To Ask

Approximately 200 COVID-19 vaccines are being actively developed. All vaccines have one main goal: to prepare a person's immune system to fight off an invading organism should the body encounter it.

To accomplish that, a vaccine presents the immune system with something that looks like the invader and is essentially harmless, but nonetheless tricks the body into developing an immune response that would fight off the real virus if it appeared. It's a bit like showing someone a picture and saying, "If this person shows up at your door, don't let them in."

There are lots of ways of making that viral "picture," and COVID-19 vaccine developers are pursuing all of them.

Inactivated virus vaccines

This approach has been around for decades. Jonas Salk used it in making his polio