With bacteria, you have a living organism, so you can disrupt the life processes happening within it to cause it death. But that still doesn't get all of the bacteria because doing so would require such a massive flood of antibiotics that you would almost certainly kill the person you're giving them to. What they do is kill enough to bring the infection to a manageable level so the immune system can do its job and stay ahead of the infection, so the person survives.
With viruses, you don't have a life process to disrupt (because they are not alive), but rather a replication process. You can attack that with drugs that block cell entry or that block replication inside cells. It - again - doesn't completely halt the infection on its own. It brings the infection to a manageable level so the immune system can stay ahead of it, so the person survives.
The mechanism is different, but the effect is the same. Whether the infection is bacterial, viral, fungal, or whatever else, the goal is to provide assistance to the immune system; not replace it. In all cases, it's the immune system that finishes the job, regardless of the pathogen. In fact, some therapies are entirely designed to assist the immune system in identifying the pathogen (or cancerous tissue). This is commonly used when the immune system is capable of handling the problem itself, but it lacks the ability to consistently identify the problematic components.
"Basic biology, stuff that was taught as a freshman in high school in many cases, is being butchered."
Oh my goodness, you're so right. High school teachers across the country have to be in tears right now at what's being presented online as "fact". It's really sad, honestly.
"Anyone who paid attention in high school, a stretch nowadays, would know that this vaccine doesn’t make you immune, it helps your body fight it off. Immunity happens AFTER your body fights it off, not because of it."
Sort of. So the way most vaccines work is by presenting an antigen (i.e. something the body can recognize as foreign and that triggers an immune response) in some way. That can be through the use of a weakened or death pathogen, or by attaching the antigen to a harmless virus or bacteria, or by attaching it to something else, or by causing some of your cells to produce the antigen themselves.
Regardless of how the antigen is presented, the process from there is the same as any infection. Macrophages and neutrophils will recognize the antigen as foreign and attack it. Since there are so many suddenly present, macrophages will signal dendritic cells that there's a problem they can't handle, so dendritic cells will collect some of the antigens and transport them to lymph nodes. Once there, a complicated process will kick off production of T cells specific to that antigen. Those T cells will then locate B cells that match the antigen and trigger them to begin mass self-replication and antibody production.
All of this happens regardless of whether the antigen came in on some SARS-CoV-2 virions, or through one of several different types of vaccines. What you then have are T cells, B cells, and neutralizing antibodies specific to that antigen which are active and ready to combat any exposure to SARS-CoV-2. This is why the Israelis have data demonstrating that the COVID-19 vaccine they've deployed (Pfizer's mRNA vaccine) block 94% of asymptomatic infections and 97% of symptomatic infections.
It's not a perfect silver bullet, but it's an incredibly powerful tool. All of Israel's neighbors are seeing their COVID-19 cases and deaths either hold steady or rise. Israel has seen daily new cases drop from 10,000 per day to 50 per day, and deaths from 100 a day to 1. 1 death in the whole country. Even with all the variants out there circulating, COVID-19 has lost the war in Israel thanks to vaccination. We're about a month or so behind Israel in terms of how much of our adult population is vaccinated. The sooner we get to where they are, the sooner we can put this all behind us.
Good post