After the Needle Enters the Arm

By Nana Dadzie Ghansah

So what happens once the needle is inserted and the COVID-19 vaccine injected into your deltoid muscle?

The following ia a really simplified account of what happens after one receives the vaccine.

Well, remember, both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are enclosed in lipid nanoparticles. So the particle fuses with the muscle cell.

The trauma of injection and a foreign substance’s presence awakens the inflammatory cells like macrophages, monocytes, mast cells and dendritic cells that hang around waiting for pathogens. This starts the gearing up of the immune reaction and is part of what is called the innate immune system.

In the muscle cell, the cell recognizes the newcomer as mRNA. It shuttles it over to the ribosomes, which are responsible for dealing with mRNA. The ribosomes read the mRNA code and produce the spike protein, S. Then, the mRNA starts decaying. Note that all of this occurs in the cytoplasm.

Even before the ribosome is done building the spike protein, sensors in the cell’s cytoplasm — TLR, NLR, and RIG sensors — have smelt the presence of strange RNA (or antigen) and cause the release of Interferon Type 1. The interferon sets off a priming of the immune system. (Note: viral RNA has codes that human RNA does not have…