What's in a vaccine and what does it do to your body?

I Lead-in.

1)     Take two minutes to write down your associations with the word ‘vaccine’. Work in pairs and compare your lists. What are the similarities and differences in your lists? Ask follow-up questions to find out more about other students’ associations with the word ‘vaccine’.

2)    In what situation do people need vaccines? Where can people get vaccines? Watch the video I task II and note down the names of the diseases written on vaccine bottles.

 

II Vocabulary focus. Match the words to their definitions. Use three words in your sentences.

 

1.	disease	A.	to look in different places, to examine
2.	conventional	B.	a situation where there is not enough of something
3.	sick	C.	the process of producing goods
4.	response	D.	the smallest part of a living thing
5.	tweak	E.	to collect a large number of things over a period of time
6.	trigger	F.	official permission
7.	efficacy	G.	an injection
8.	threat	H.	after something else
9.	shortage	I.	illness of people
10.	manufacturing	J.	ill, not healthy
11.	trace	K.	traditional, used for a long time
12.	foreign	L.	information, facts and numbers
13.	scout	M.	the ability to produce the right result
14.	scoop	N.	simple, easy to understand
15.	subsequently	O.	to make a small change
16.	jab	P.	not belonging to or coming from outside
17.	approval	Q.	a small sight that something existed
18.	cell	R.	possible danger
19.	spike protein	S.	answer or reaction
20.	straightforward	T.	to pick something up very quickly
21.	accumulate	U.	component of coronavirus structure
22.	data	V.	to make something happen quickly

 

 

III Vocabulary focus. Follow the link below. Focus on the words and expressions (study definitions), match the terms to their definitions, solve the crossword puzzle, complete the quiz, chase down the correct answer to earnpoints, unscramble words and phrases (correct order of letters), type in words to fill in the blanks, test your knowledge of  vocabulary.

 

IV Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t need to use.

 

diseases; people; elements; adjuvants; immune; popular; protein; traces; elementary; water; efficacy; ignores; infection; immediately; immune system; microbe; vaccines; stops; changing

 

There are all sorts of vaccines for lots of different 1) _____, but conventional vaccines all share some common ingredients. So, other than 2) _____, what are they made of? I asked professor Adam Finn to explain. He was involved in the Oxford  AstraZeneca vaccine work and he knows a lot about 3) _____.

There's nearly always a little bit of or maybe even all of a 4) _____that would normally cause an 5) _____to make you sick. But this time it's just going to make the 6) _____response without making you sick.

The part that is most commonly used is the 7) _____on the outside of a microbe which is called an antigen. So what else is there?

So there'll be some kind of a preservative in there that basically 8) _____the vaccine from containing something you really don't want to get. And the other thing that might be in there is something to just tweak your 9) _____   _____ into action. So it just kind of triggers things off and makes you get that protective response.

Those last things he mentioned are called adjuvants. Not all vaccines have or need adjuvants but when they are sometimes present, they can help a vaccine achieve the best 10) _____possible.

In many cases, without an adjuvant, the vaccine simply just doesn't work, it doesn't give you protection so the body just 11) _____it, it doesn't see it as a threat and nothing happens. The other point is that you can actually use  less of the antigen that you need to put in there by putting in the adjuvant and if there's a shortage, it means that you can spread it over a much larger number of 12) _____and get more people immunised for the same amount of vaccine.

Those are the main 13) _____of a vaccine: antigens, preservatives and 14) _____.   But then you've also got your stabilisers  to keep the antigen from 15) _____and there's also something called residuals  which are basically just the things left over from the manufacturing process. But these are only present in vanishingly small 16) _____.

 

V Comprehension check. Mark the sentences as True (T) or False (F). Correct the false statements.

1.    There are vaccines for lots of different diseases.  

2.     All conventional vaccines have completely different ingredients.  

3.    Many conventional vaccines include water.  

4.    Vaccines have a little bit of or maybe even all of a microbe that would normally cause an infection to make people sick.  .

5.     Vaccines are designed to make people sick, after the long period of disease people will have better immunity.  

6. The part that is most commonly used in vaccines is the protein on the outside of a microbe which is called an antibody.   

7. Vaccines need a preservative that stops the vaccine from containing something people don't want to get.  

8. Vaccines make immune system very weak and it cannot take action.  

9. All vaccines include adjuvants.  

10. Adjuvants can help a vaccine achieve the best efficacy possible.  

11. Sometimes without an adjuvant, the vaccine doesn’t work; it doesn't give any protection so the body just ignores it.  

12.  The main elements of a vaccine are: antibodies, preservatives and additives.  

13. Some vaccines include stabilisers that help to change antigen and residuals that are very important components.   

 

VI Watch the video and choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

That's what's inside a vaccinated/vaccine/toxin. But what happens when you put all these things inside your body? How does it reactor/reacted/react?

Cells in your body that are trained really to look for foreign/train/foreigner material in places where it shouldn't be. They're scouting around looking for that foreign material and they scoop it up and then they carry it off to areas called lymph nodes and that's where the mutiny/immune/immunity response starts to happen. And your body responds to that and it builds up cells and antibodies that will neutrally/neutralise/realised that foreign material and that will protect you if you then subsequently get exposed to that infectious/affection/infection whether it's a virus or a bacterium. And your whole body will be preparation/prepared/paired to react to that when it arrives and the way that it wouldn't have been if you  hadn't had the vaccine.

So what about the Covid jabs? Do they work like conveniently/conventional/intentional vaccines? There are a few different ones around  and they work in different ways. So we're just going to focus on the Covid vaccines that have already got proved/arrival/approval in the UK. That's the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine which involves DNA, then there's the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine which both involve mRNA. But I'll let Adam explain how that works.

So these vaccines are also different in the sense that you're not given little bits of the lobe/microbe/probe or even the whole microbe what we're doing instead is we're giving the genetic code for one part of the virus and then letting our own cellular/seller/cells  make the bits of virus that we then respond to by giving them the code to do that. So the ones we're using right now, those ones don't have adjuvants, they don't have preservatives in and  they do need to get used pretty quickly after you take them out the bridge/fridge/frigid for that reason.

 

 VII Watch the video again and answer the questions.

1.    How do cells react to a vaccine? 

2.    How does a body react to foreign material that came in a vaccine? 

3.    What Covid vaccines have already got approval in the UK? 

4.    Do Covid vaccines have small parts of microbes in them? Why or why not?

5.    What components do Covid vaccines have? How does it influence the way people use those vaccines?

 

 VIII Watch the video. Put the sentences from the talk in order (1- 6).

 

a)      They are no less safe than conventional vaccines.

b)      Modern Covid vaccines are helping our own cells make something that looks the same as a Covid viral spike protein so that our immune system can respond to it.

c)      We know a lot about old-fashioned vaccines, but Covid vaccines are the new ones. Modern Covid vaccines are pretty straightforward, they work much better than any of us expected them to.

d)      The only ingredients they do share with other more common vaccines are salt, water and sugar.

e)      Modern Covid vaccines are also new and like all new thing in science, it takes time to accumulate data to better understand how well they work.

f)       The three modern Covid jabs are not delivering a Covid microbe into the body.

 

IX OVER TO YOU. Discuss the questions with other students

A)  Compare the Covid vaccines described in the video and the Covid vaccines people can get in your country.

B)   Do people know how Covid vaccines work? Where can people get information about different types of Covid vaccines? 

C)   What do people in your country think about Covid vaccines?