The COVAX Facility aims to provide fair & equal access to the Covid vaccine for 7.8 billion people.

To commemorate https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🇲🇾" title="Flagge von Malaysia" aria-label="Emoji: Flagge von Malaysia">& #39;s entry into COVAX, I& #39;ll spend this week on some fun vaccine facts.

Fact 1: Edward Jenner discovered the concept of vaccination in 1796, ~220 years ago. (1/6)

For many years, he heard stories that dairymaids don’t get smallpox if they’ve had cowpox previously. Dairymaids spend a lot of time with cows to make milk or cheeses in a dairy.

This pic is cowpox. (2/6)

A young dairymaid had fresh cowpox. Jenner transferred some material from her skin lesions to an 8-year old boy’s skin. The boy had some mild fever but was otherwise quite well.

2 months later, Jenner repeated with smallpox but the boy had no fever.

This pic is smallpox. (3/6)

This proves the theory that “giving people very small amounts of a virus or bacteria can trigger their immune system to help fight future infections of the same virus or bacteria”.

This pic shows how vaccines work. (4/6)

The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia.

Therefore, Jenner decided to call this new concept “vaccination”. (5/6)

Although… some historians think that Jenner used horsepox, not cowpox. So instead of vaccine, perhaps we should call it “equusine”!

This shows that science continues to progress, because our instruments & tools become more precise & sophisticated. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧪" title="Test tube" aria-label="Emoji: Test tube">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔬" title="Mikroskop" aria-label="Emoji: Mikroskop">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧬" title="DNA" aria-label="Emoji: DNA">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💉" title="Spritze" aria-label="Emoji: Spritze"> (6/6)

References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Jenner">https://www.britannica.com/biography...
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3035531/
4.">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic... https://medlineplus.gov/ency/imagepages/19059.htm">https://medlineplus.gov/ency/imag...
5. https://www.immunology.org/celebrate-vaccines/public-engagement/guide-childhood-vaccinations/how-vaccines-work
6.https://www.immunology.org/celebrate... href=" https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/why-word-vaccine-probably-all-wrong">https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017...

Why the word ‘vaccine’ is probably all wrong

Century-old immunization suggests that cows were not the source of the world’s first vaccine

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/