VIDEO: The coronavirus vaccine works entirely different than any other human vaccine ever used. Scientists say to not think of this vaccine like a flu shot, because it uses new technology some are calling a game changer.
“It's a new era in vaccine design,” says postdoctoral researcher Stephen Goldstein.
A flu vaccine is a diluted version of the virus that might provide a defense if the actual virus is introduced into the human body.
When a patient gets injected with the coronavirus vaccine, messenger RNA carries instructions to the cells on how to make COVID-19 spike proteins. The spike proteins have shown to not be harmful to humans during clinical trials. Goldstein says the body can pump out huge quantiles of the spike protein into the blood stream, which can then attack the virus if it's introduced into the body.