There are different types of antibodies that your body produces to fight a foreign invader like a virus.

The spike protein is a protein that exists on the outside of the coronavirus. Spike protein tricks your cells, allowing the virus to enter and begin reproducing itself, at great harm to your cells.

Traditionally, vaccines contain a harmless portion of a real virus. Your body produces antibodies against the harmless portion. By developing antibodies against that portion, when your body encounters the fully intact live virus, the antibodies, which act as a rapid-response Navy SEAL team, attach themselves to the virus. Then other immune cells swallow up the antibody-viral compound particle, which kills the virus.

Antibodies that lead to death of the virus are called neutralizing antibodies. They are "smart."

When you are injected with the coronavirus vaccine, it commands your body to produce spike protein. Your immune system then produces antibodies against spike protein. Those antibodies are supposed to help your body immediately attack a future infection of the coronavirus.

Sometimes, things go wrong with the immune response to a foreign invader. Antibodies are produced against the invader, but not the right kind. They are called non-neutralizing antibodies, because they don't neutralize or kill the virus. They are "dumb."