Lies You Were Told About COVID - Part One
The COVID vaccines are better than Natural Immunity? (No, they are not.)
Virtually everything the American people were told about the Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) from the illness it causes, COVID-19, to the treatments for COVID-19, to how deadly the virus is to how many died from it, to the COVID vaccines and everything in between was misinformation, propaganda or lies. The American people need to know the breathtaking extent of these misinformation campaigns. My next few substack articles will deal with some of these misinformation campaigns and will arm my readers with the truth.
This first article on COVID misinformation will deal with lies about Natural Immunity. Buckle up and let’s take a good look at this particular piece of nonsense.
First, what is Natural Immunity? Natural Immunity is the immunity acquired from exposure to a disease organism through infection with the actual disease, according to the United States Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Literally from the start of the COVID pandemic the Federal Government, the Medical Establishment, the Fake News Media and Big Pharma sought to downplay or outright deny Natural Immunity to COVID. Early in the pandemic, on May 12, 2020, Mother Jones proclaimed:
To that end, early on, Natural Immunity acquired by those who were infected with and recovered from COVID supposedly only lasted for three months. This claim was made by the CDC and the Medical Establishment and spread around the Country:
When the COVID vaccines came out, the rhetoric predictably changed to favor the vaccines over Natural Immunity. In an article published in May 5, 2021, Business Insider promoted the dubious opinions of Dr. Anthony Fauci about the COVID vaccines:
On November 1, 2021, WebMD proclaimed:
The claims were based on a statistical study done by the CDC. The article claims the CDC’s study showed unvaccinated people who had a recent infection “were five times more likely to be reinfected with the coronavirus compared to those who were fully vaccinated and didn’t have a prior infection.” (As will be demonstrated later in this article, that statement is not correct.)
This study was published only days earlier, on October 29, 2021:
On November 1, 2021, The Washington Post reported on the same CDC study (and another CDC study) with this headline:
On September 10, 2021, Johns Hopkins University Magazine weighed in on the issue:
In another article on May 28, 2021, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explained:
On November 23, 2021, CNBC published this report:
On June 21, 2021, USA TODAY published a dubious “fact check” with the following headline:
Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines provide safer, more consistent immunity than infection
The article claims the COVID vaccines are “the better bet” than natural immunity because the vaccines “provide more consistent protection.”
Similar articles, news reports and interviews with experts could be cited endlessly, but the simple fact is Government, Media and the Medical Establishment touted the COVID vaccines as superior to Natural Immunity.
This pervasive thinking led to the vaccine mandates even for people who previously recovered from COVID and enjoyed Natural Immunity.
This article in The Daily Signal from February 17, 2022, offers some eye-opening background on the Federal vaccine mandates and how those mandates led to others in States and the private sector. Included is a link to an interview with vaccine advocate and FDA Advisory Committee member Paul Offit who describes a private meeting between him, three other outside advisors and Drs. Walensky (CDC Director), Fauci (NIAID Director), Collins (NIH Director) and other health officials where a “straw poll” was held about whether or not exclude those with natural immunity from vaccine mandates. The vote was “narrowly” in favor of applying the mandates to those with natural immunity. That is what passes for the “scientific method” at the CDC. The result? In Federal vaccine mandates, the Federal Government demanded those with Natural Immunity still had to get the vaccine.
BUT WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT NATURAL IMMUNITY?
In study after study, Natural Immunity has been proven superior to the non-protection afforded by COVID vaccines.
The best single source confirming that Natural Immunity to COVID is real and that Natural Immunity outperforms the COVID vaccines is an article from October 17, 2021 by the Brownstone Institute providing links to, and descriptions of, over 160 plus studies showing Natural Immunity is real and, with respect to many of the studies, superior, to whatever “protection” the vaccines provide:
This article is literally a treasure trove of studies and data proving the effectiveness of Natural Immunity. One could stop right here and the point is proven, but let’s look a little deeper.
Do you remember the COVID variant known as the “Delta” variant? A study conducted in California and New York demonstrated Natural Immunity was superior to vaccination at reducing the likelihood of hospitalization from Delta variant infections. The Epoch Times published a good article about the study on January 19, 2022:
The study itself may be found here.
Yet another study, this one known as a “Retrospective Cohort Study” demonstrated Natural Immunity was far superior vaccine-induced protection. In fact, the study, which was released in 2022, showed “SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinated people” (these are vaccinated people who had not previously been infected with COVID) had a 13.06 fold “increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to unvaccinated-previously-infected individuals.” This study literally showed vaccinated people were over thirteen times more likely to have a breakthrough infection that those with Natural Immunity from a previous COVID infection:
Another study published in The Journal of Immunology in September 2021, showed a specific type of T cell is capable, after a “typical case of mild COVID-19,” of providing long lasting, “self-renewing” immunity from COVID-19. The authors opined if one assumes similarities between the T cells from an earlier COVID strain (SARS-CoV-1), then the specific memory of the T cells from SARS-CoV-2 can “persist for up to 17 years, and perhaps even longer:”
A “systematic review and meta-analysis” in The Lancet published in February 2023, evaluated over 65 studies of Natural Immunity from 19 different countries. The study found “Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA:”
A good article by Children's Health Defense on February 17, 2023, highlights the findings of The Lancet study:
As the article notes, The Lancet study found Natural Immunity was “ . . . 88.9% effective against severe disease, hospitalization and death for all COVID-19 variants 10 months after infection. It also provided 78.6% protection against reinfection for all variants except omicron BA.1, for which protection against reinfection was 45.3%.”
One could go on and on citing studies confirming the efficacy of Natural Immunity, but hopefully the point is made: Natural Immunity is real and is superior to whatever “protection” the COVID vaccines provide.
Wait, but what about that “study” by the United States Center for Disease Control & Prevention which purportedly showed mRNA vaccinated people have a lower rate of reinfection by COVID-19 than naturally immune people? Well, a closer look at this unusual “study” by the CDC reveals it is flawed and literally meaningless.
Just how reliable was the CDC’s “study?” Well, in an article published on November 8, 2021, Just the News characterized the CDC study as follows:
The “study” was published in the CDC’s publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). As the CDC admits “. . . most of the articles that appear in MMWR are not ‘peer-reviewed’ in the way that submission to medical journals are . . .”
The study itself looked at people who were hospitalized in 2021 with “COVID-like symptoms” including respiratory failure, cough, fever, pneumonia, etc…, from January 1, 2021 to September 2, 2021. The study analyzed people hospitalized with these symptoms who had at least one PCR or rapid antigen test prior to the hospitalization and at least one PCR test in the two weeks leading up to or the 3 days after admission. The study covered 9 states and 187 hospitals.
In that time frame 201,269 people were hospitalized with “COVID-like” illness, according to the CDC. From that group of just over 200,000 people 7,348 people had two tests during the appropriate time period and were either vaccinated or had previous infection (Natural Immunity).
Of those 7,348 people hospitalized with the COVID-like symptoms who had the requisite PCR tests, 6,328 were vaccinated (and previously uninfected) and 1,020 were previously infected but unvaccinated (Naturally Immune). Again, this is all in the study.
You read that right. In the 9 states covered by this study, during the study itself, there were 6 times as many vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms (6,328) as Naturally Immune people (1,020).
How did the CDC turn this into a positive finding? Well, of the 6,328 people hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms who were vaccinated, but not previously infected with COVID, only 324 were confirmed by laboratory testing to have COVID. That is 5.1%. Of the 1,020 unvaccinated but previously COVID-infected (Naturally Immune) patients, 89 were confirmed by laboratory tests to have COVID. That is 8.7%. Thus, the Naturally Immune patients were more likely to test positive for COVID. That is what the CDC twisted into a tremendous positive for the vaccines.
A screenshot of this excerpt from the study is reproduced here:
Then the CDC statistically adjusted this data for age, geography, time, local virus circulation and more and concluded naturally immune patients had 5.5 times greater odds of testing positive than vaccinated patients.
(A couple of good breakdowns of the study were done by Chris Masterjohn and Alex Berenson for those interested in a deeper dive into the CDC’s nonsense.)
Literally all the CDC’s study shows, assuming it is accurate (and that is a big assumption), is that during the time period of the study, unvaccinated people who were previously infected with COVID were more likely to test positive for COVID than vaccinated people. Remember, 8.7% of the naturally immune people tested positive, while 5.1% of the vaccinated people tested positive.
But, all of those people were already in the hospital with COVID-like symptoms otherwise they were not included in the study. And 6 times more vaccinated people (6,328) than naturally immune people (1,020) met the testing criteria (meaning, among other things, they were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms). As Chris Masterjohn noted in his breakdown of the study:
Then the Fake News Media takes this meaningless study about the likelihood of people who were already in the hospital with COVID-likes symptoms to test positive for COVID and morph it into claims the vaccine provides several times more protection than Natural Immunity, when the study itself showed no such thing. Simply unbelievable.
Do the Vaccines Impair Natural Immunity?
The effort by the Government and Medical Establishment to push the vaccines on people who already acquired Natural Immunity by imposing vaccine mandates on those who recovered from COVID-19, may have actually hindered the ability to reach herd immunity due to the potential for the COVID vaccines to compromise or erase Natural Immunity.
Some studies point to this problem. For instance, this study in The New England Journal of Medicine in September 2022, looked at several hundred thousand children ages 5 to 11:
The study broke the children into four groups based on their previous infection and vaccination status. The four groups were: (1) vaccinated but not previously COVID infected children, (2) vaccinated children who previously were infected with COVID, (3) unvaccinated children who previously had COVID and (4) unvaccinated children who had not previously been infected with COVID.
A few tables from the study tell the tale:
Table A shows the waning “effectiveness” of the Pfizer jab against infection. The “effectiveness” wanes in just a few months. In fact the effectiveness of the jab against Delta variant sunk below zero in under 5 months.
This table, Table C, shows the effectiveness of previous infection against reinfection. Note this table covers a much greater length of time than Table A and shows effectiveness of previous infection for Delta variant at 15 months (when Table A showed the Pfizer jab’s effectiveness against Delta hit zero in under 5 months).
But what happened to the effectiveness of Natural Immunity in the children who got the COVID vaccine? Check out Table B:
This table shows the effectiveness against reinfection for vaccinated kids who were previously uninfected reached zero is about 18 weeks, while previously infected and vaccinated kids reached zero effectiveness at about 20 weeks. Compare this to Table C where the unvaccinated, but previously infected kids experienced much greater resistance to reinfection for Delta and Omicron variants over much greater lengths of time. This study seriously implicates the COVID vaccines in undermining the effectiveness of Natural Immunity.
A good breakdown of this study may be found here:
Another study, this one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August 2022, analyzed the rate of reinfection in Iceland during the COVID Omicron wave:
Rate of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection During an Omicron Wave in Iceland
The study found the probability of reinfection “. . . was higher among persons who receive 2 or more doses compared with 1 dose or less of vaccine.” Worse still, the study showed the reinfections were more common in the 18-29 age group (an age group that did not need to be vaccinated in the first place). Another good discussion of this article is found at Igor Chudov’s substack.
There is more. Studies of the COVID vaccines are pointing to the development of what is known as immune tolerance. In layman’s terms, “immune tolerance” is the result of the body’s ability to generate specific types of antibodies that bind to allergens and tell the body to ignore them, rather than producing an inflammatory response (similar to what allergy medicine does to stop the body from causing inflammation by attacking the allergins).
There are studies showing the mRNA COVID vaccines may cause the body’s immune system to produce antibodies telling the body to ignore the virus itself. See Science Immunology from December 2022:
This study in Frontiers in Immunology in January 2023 also demonstrated similar IgG4 antibody responses in mRNA vaccine recipients:
Again, good discussions of the mRNA COVID vaccines and “immune tolerance” may be found at Igor Chudov’s substack here and here. These are dire implications for the vaccinated, simply because if “immune tolerance” actually happens to vaccinated people, their immune systems will essentially stop trying (in part, at least) to kill or clear the virus from the body, leading to longer, potentially worse infections.
The bottom line is Natural Immunity is superior to the COVID vaccines. This is confirmed by numerous studies conducted all over the world. The fact the United States Government, the Medical Establishment and the Fake News Media ignored this for so long all the while pushing these hastily conjured experimental biological agents (the COVID vaccines) on people is unfathomable.
Commentary: The challenges to, and denial of, Natural Immunity at the outset of the COVID pandemic were not based on science, that much we know. The claims the virtually untested, new COVID vaccines were “superior” to Natural Immunity were exaggerated, over-stated, stated too early or outright rubbish. The efforts to push the COVID vaccines (and boosters) on people who already contracted and recovered from the virus were completely misguided. While this article included some studies indicating the COVID vaccines result in repeated infections and the inability of people to clear the virus, there is much more that was omitted due to sheer volume and complexity. From chronic COVID in the vaccinated world, the potentially toxic contents of the COVID vaccines, studies demonstrating the vaccines efficacy fades quickly, studies showing the vaccines and boosters quickly develop negative efficacy (meaning the vaccines increase hospitalization and death rates), and more, plenty of issues were omitted from this post.
The bottom line is the COVID vaccines made Big Pharma tens of billions of dollars. By that standard, the COVID vaccines were very effective. By virtually every other measure they were, and are, failures.
Natural Immunity to COVID is real. It was always real. And the CDC, Medical Establishment, Fake News Media and Big Pharma pulled one massive grift on the public, probably in an effort to push the experimental biological agents masquerading as “vaccines” on the world. The next time they tell you anything about COVID, keep this in mind.
(This article is derived from a Chapter of my upcoming book, Fake News Exposed: 25 of the Worst Media Lies about Conservatives, Guns, COVID and Everything Else. Keep an eye out for it. Meanwhile, you may pick up a copy of one of my other books at Amazon.)