COVID Vaccines Protect You, They Don't Kill You

It's refreshing to see that some people are very wise when it comes to understanding the COVID vaccine. This is the Los Angeles Times on September 14, 2025. Someone ought to show it to RFK, Jr.

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Letters to the Editor: A reminder that the true purpose of vaccines is to strengthen the immune system

"To the editor: Why do people still misunderstand vaccines (“When I got COVID, readers said it proved vaccines don’t work. What has RFK Jr. wrought?,” Sept. 9)? It’s really not difficult. The main thing to know is that vaccines are not, in terms of the science, preventive medicine. They do not keep disease out of your body. Vaccines actually do exactly what Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he wants to do: improve your personal immune system.

"Think of them as a personal trainer for a particular sport (disease). They train your immune system into recognizing a threat so it can become faster at reacting to it and stronger to fight it off. They do this by giving your body a small taste of “the bad stuff.” This primes your immune system to fight off whatever it is, whether it’s polio, measles, tuberculosis, the flu or COVID. Getting immunized does not keep you from getting sick, but if you do happen to come across “the bad stuff,” you have a really good chance to fight it off.

"As columnist Steve Lopez pointed out, he got mildly sick when he had COVID, but was not hospitalized. Compare his situation to the one during the pandemic before the vaccine was developed. So many people were hospitalized with severe illness, and so many people died from the disease before we learned how to train our immune systems to fight back.

"Better. Faster. Stronger. That’s how vaccines work.

"Dee Ois, Chatsworth"