To the editor: Why do folks nonetheless misunderstand vaccines (“Once I bought COVID, readers stated it proved vaccines don’t work. What has RFK Jr. wrought?,” Sept. 9)? It’s actually not troublesome. The primary factor to know is that vaccines aren’t, by way of the science, preventive medication. They don’t maintain illness out of your physique. Vaccines really do precisely what Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he needs to do: enhance your private immune system.
Consider them as a private coach for a specific sport (illness). They prepare your immune system into recognizing a menace so it will probably turn out to be 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 maintain you from getting sick, however if you happen to do occur to come back throughout “the unhealthy stuff,” you’ve gotten a very good probability to combat it off.
As columnist Steve Lopez identified, he bought mildly sick when he had COVID, however was not hospitalized. Evaluate his scenario to the one in the course of the pandemic earlier than the vaccine was developed. So many individuals had been hospitalized with extreme sickness, and so many individuals died from the illness earlier than we discovered how one can prepare our immune techniques to combat again.
Higher. Quicker. Stronger. That’s how vaccines work.
Dee Ois, Chatsworth
