Actually that's what makes the vaccine so cool.
So we're all familiar with what the virus looks like, right? The ball covered in lumpy spikes?
Those lumpy spikes are a particular protein that let's the virus into our cells, like a key or a knife into a tent. It's what makes the virus so infectious. Without it it's not a very effective virus as it would struggle to get into your cells before your immune system could wipe it out
The mRNA vaccine targets those proteins and nothing else. The proteins make up a critical percentage of the virus shell as well so wiping out that protein kills the virus too most of the time. If the virus were to mutate away from it's current structure that the mRNA vaccine protects against, it would lose it's most dangerous component - it's ability to quickly and effectively infect your cells and replicate.
The vaccine would also protect against similarly structured viruses also like variants and smaller mutations, even if they weren't exactly the same, just less effectively.
It's honestly really cool. Because it protects against a specific protein structure found almost exclusively in cornoaviruses, not the virus itself. It has none of the actual virus in the vaccine.
