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I'm an undergraduate student studying biology (aka very little knowledge) and have two questions on how the Covid vaccine works. If one were to take the vaccine and immediately test a day later, would a positive result test mean the patient has Covid or simply the immune vaccine response doing its job making antibodies. Secondly, do cytotoxic T cells kill cells with the mRNA vaccine and is that what causes adverse effects? Thank you in advance
I am assuming that the “positive test result” is referring to the use of either an at-home rapid antigen test or a molecular diagnostic (e.g., PCR) test which is evaluating for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus—it does not measure antibodies against the virus. Vaccination with either the mRNA (Pfizer or Moderna) or recombinant spike protein (Novavax) vaccines will NOT cause a person to have a positive test result. I do not believe cytotoxic T cells are targeting immune cells (antigen presenting cells) that are processing the mRNA or recombinant spike protein vaccine. The adverse effects from vaccination are unpredictable but in general are due to a robust immune response, which may be from the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. There are other licensed, high-efficacy vaccines which are also reactogenic (cause self-limited adverse effects) such as shingles vaccine and HPV vaccine.
