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The Life and Mind of DamnBlackHeart
This is to help me stay actively writing. So expect to see rants, tips on writing, thoughts on subjects, me complaining of boredom, reviews, anime, movies, video games, conventions, tv shows and whatever life throws at me.
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Zombie Apocalypse - Vaccine Question |
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I just read your post on zombies and vaccines (just what I needed) and I was wondering something. If an immune person can give their plasma to help treat an infected person, could they could be used to produce a vaccine? In my story a girl is infected, so she has an immunity and a weakened version of the virus in her. Vaccines couldn't be produced before because the virus becomes dormant after infection. My story is in the near future and most humans are dead. Would this make any sense? -- asked by iguanaparrots
That’s how it usually works. When a person is immune, they are used (their blood is taken and the anti-bodies are extracted from it) to create a vaccine because their body produces the proper anti-bodies that fight against the virus. However, the problem is finding someone that is truly immune (there’s also carriers — which is a person that has contracted the virus, but does not displays any symptoms. Although unaffected by the virus themselves, carriers can transmit it to others).
A person immune is immune because they were able to fight off the virus. They wouldn’t still be infected afterwards. Think of it as catching a cold; you’re sick at first but you get better and then you’re healthy again. I don’t know much about how your zombie virus works, so I don’t know if you have carriers in your story, but it does sound like you do. An example of this is in the video game, Left 4 Dead. The survivors who were “immune” were actually carriers. Or you can check out the film 28 Weeks Later, that has something about carriers being a key to creating a vaccine.
Once an infected person is given a vaccine it would make them healthy again, but it wouldn’t “cure” them or make them naturally immune too. They would just be immune for as long as the vaccine is within their system. They would probably have to continually be given the vaccine in order to maintain immunity. They might have be monitored to make sure that their body adjusts to the vaccine or if they’re infected to make sure that their body fights off the virus. Sometimes even with a vaccine, the person’s body can have a negative response to it (like their own anti-bodies starts to fight against the vaccine — treating it as a antigen).
Think of it as a Flu shot. People aren’t immune and it’s a serious disease, particularly among young children, older adults, and people with certain chronic health conditions, such as asthma, heart disease or diabetes. CDC recommends a yearly flu vaccine for just about everyone 6 months and older, even when the viruses the vaccine protects against have not changed from the previous season. The reason for this is that a person’s immune protection from vaccination declines over time, so an annual vaccination is needed to get the “optimal” or best protection against the flu.
It takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body that protect against flu virus infection. This is why medical professionals recommend people to get vaccinated in time to be protected before flu viruses begin spreading in their community. Although immunity obtained from flu vaccination can vary by person.
I’m not sure what you mean by having a character that is infected with a weakened version of the virus, but has immunity. Is she a carrier, because that’s what it sounds like? If so, then yes it’s possible for a vaccine to be developed from a carrier. As for an vaccine not being developed because the virus goes dormant after infection, that would make sense. But that would also mean that it would be extremely difficult to develop a vaccine in the first place, because it’ll be hard to find someone that is immune or a carrier since the virus does that. But then again, this is a fictional story so you’re able to bend logic as much as you need to.
Unfortunately, I’m not a doctor or scientist so I don’t know how much help I was. This is just what I’ve gather from a bit of research and guess work.
 DamnBlackHeart · Wed Jan 14, 2015 @ 12:39am · 0 Comments |
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