Sept. 14, 2025 7 AM PT
To the editor: Why do folks nonetheless misunderstand vaccines (“When I got COVID, readers said it proved vaccines don’t work. What has RFK Jr. wrought?,” Sept. 9)? It’s actually not troublesome. The principle factor to know is that vaccines should not, when it comes to the science, preventive drugs. They don’t preserve illness out of your physique. Vaccines truly do precisely what Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he desires to do: enhance your private immune system.
Consider them as a private coach for a selected sport (illness). They prepare your immune system into recognizing a menace so it may develop into sooner at reacting to it and stronger to combat it off. They do that by giving your physique a small style of “the unhealthy stuff.” This primes your immune system to combat off no matter it’s, whether or not it’s polio, measles, tuberculosis, the flu or COVID. Getting immunized doesn’t preserve you from getting sick, however if you happen to do occur to return throughout “the unhealthy stuff,” you may have a extremely good probability to combat it off.
As columnist Steve Lopez identified, he received mildly sick when he had COVID, however was not hospitalized. Examine his state of affairs to the one through the pandemic earlier than the vaccine was developed. So many individuals have been hospitalized with extreme sickness, and so many individuals died from the illness earlier than we discovered methods to prepare our immune methods to combat again.
Higher. Sooner. Stronger. That’s how vaccines work.
Dee Ois, Chatsworth
