[takebackaustin]

Adjuvant: ingredient to make the immune system start reacting to things it wouldn’t otherwise react to. Useful for creating autoimmune disease.

[Rockingham]

An adjuvant is used to help assure an immune response to the disease specific antigen that is the point of the vaccine. On balance, using an adjuvant makes sense because it stretches the supply of antigen and limits the amount introduced into the body. Still, there is a statistically small but real risk of major, even catastrophic adverse reactions to a vaccine.

In most adverse reactions, the problem is not the adjuvant but that an abnormally sensitive individual has reacted badly to the antigen or to chicken egg protein that has slipped though the antigen purification process.

Novavax is highly regarded by many medical experts because it is pioneering a new and better method of vaccine production that relies on identifying key antigens from a pathogen, producing those antigens quickly and in abundance using not chicken eggs but genetically modified insect bacteria, and then adding its mild, plant based adjuvant with a favorable safety profile to finish the vaccine.

In concept at least, this should result in vaccines that are safer because they have a reduced risk of adverse reactions.

[catnipman]

“Adjuvant: ingredient to make the immune system start reacting to things it wouldn’t otherwise react to. Useful for creating autoimmune disease.”

you totally nailed it ...