Editor:

Miss Gustin's letter regarding Torgensen's cartoon about vaccines was an excellent example of misinformation (Mailbox, Sept. 15.). She started with something true: Vaccines don't necessarily keep people from getting COVID. Then she went on to imply that we, the public, had been lied to about that. And she used emotionally charge statements like, "publicly admitted" and "it's disturbing" (italics are mine). She purposely misconstrued the truth that Faucci, et al weren't "admitting" anything, they were trying to educate public about realistic expectations.

I listen to CNN and NPR — surely pretty mainstream media. From almost the beginning, scientists, epidemiologists and other health professions let us know the vaccines would not necessarily prevent you from getting the virus. What they said the vaccines do, and continue to do incredibly well, is decrease severe illness, hospitalization and death. The statistical decoupling of infection rates from deaths is proof of the vaccine pudding. Also the fact that the majority of COVID deaths are in unvaccinated folks.

As to "...a portion of the public that is resistant to facts, science and reality," Ms. Gustin, I am willing to put my sources next to your sources any day. I ask you, Ms. Gustin, to stop promulgating misinformation. Speak the whole truth, or nothing.

For those wanting to see facts and figures about who is getting COVID and who is dying from it, I suggest the epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina's blog.

Lauri Rose, Dinsmore