system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why can't we just put some dead COVID-19 viruses in a syringe and call it a vaccine?

Isn't that what vaccines are? I know there's a reason why but I'm too ignorant to know it.
gpt
Viruses aren't really alive in the first place, they're basically a twisted knot of proteins and DNA which has a specific shape that encourages living cells to absorb them, then make more and more until the cell explodes, dumping all the new copies into your body.

Other than this, they don't eat or breathe or respirate or anything, they just hang around like a burr waiting for a passing sock until and unless their proteins denature to the point where they're no longer viable.

The trick with making a vaccine is creating a variant that looks similar enough on the outside that your immune system can learn to recognise the real thing, but either can't actually infect your cells, or causes them to make broken versions that don't work instead of replicating properly - but *without* the altered version doing any *other* nasty stuff by mistake.

Folks would be rightfully livid if they were given a brand new superbug labelled as a vaccine for the current one and pretty jaded if the vaccine didn't work at all, so development has to be done *quite* carefully - which takes time.