This is the introduction to an extensive series of articles about natural immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2 and how it compares to the immunity induced by COVID‑19 vaccines. Links to each installment of the series will be compiled on this overview page as they are published.
Since COVID‑19 vaccines were first authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2020, the public health establishment has been communicating the message that natural immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2 is insufficient and therefore that people who’ve already recovered from infection with the coronavirus still need to get vaccinated.
At times, policymakers and supposedly trustworthy medical authorities have even gone so far in pushing the mass vaccination agenda as to treat natural immunity as virtually non-existent.
There have been three main arguments propagated to support the narrative that infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19), does not confer sufficient immunity and that vaccination is therefore still required.
The first argument is that we don’t know how long natural immunity lasts. The implicit premise of this argument, sometimes explicitly stated, is that scientific evidence shows that immunity might be short-lived due to rapidly waning antibodies.
That argument then serves as the premise of the second argument, which is that vaccination of people with pre-existing natural immunity boosts the levels of antibodies in their blood. The assumption underlying this argument is that antibodies equal immunity and more antibodies equal better immunity.
Those two arguments in turn serve as the premise for the third, which is that vaccination offers better protection against emerging variants of SARS‑CoV‑2 than natural immunity. This argument assumes that natural immunity offers insufficient protection against mutated forms of the virus and that the immune response to vaccination is broader and therefore more cross-protective against genetically diverse strains compared with natural immunity.
However, the underlying claims upon which each of these arguments are grounded are demonstrable lies. The arguments are not merely fallacious but dependent on falsehoods propagated with demonstrable intent to deceive.
If public health authorities and medical experts were honest, what the public would have been told from the start is that natural immunity is not only protective against future disease but superior to the immunity conferred by COVID‑19 vaccines.
The fact that the opposite message has been so strongly conveyed through public relations communications demonstrates that the public health establishment is more concerned with achieving the political goal of getting everyone vaccinated than with giving people the information they need to be able to make their own truly informed choice.
In other words, the information that the public has been bombarded with is not intended to educate but to manufacture consent for the political agenda of mass vaccination through deceitful propaganda.
Instructively, the disinformation campaign has been accompanied by efforts to censor truths that don’t align with the political agenda and by efforts to coerce people into subjecting themselves to a mass uncontrolled experiment.
Until August 23, 2021, all three vaccines available in the United States were distributed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which by the FDA’s own standard means that the vaccines remained experimental pharmaceutical products.
The mRNA vaccine codeveloped by Pfizer and BioNTech was the first to receive authorization on December 11, 2020.[1] This was followed on December 18 by the authorization of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine.[2] The third vaccine, a vector vaccine developed by Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson, was authorized on February 27, 2021.[3] The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, under the trade name Comirnaty, received FDA approval on August 23 and is presently the only vaccine licensed for use in the US.[4]
Under an Emergency Use Authorization, the FDA allows the use of unlicensed and unapproved medical products while clinical trials are ongoing. Products with EUA status are considered “investigational” or “experimental” by the FDA.[5]
This did not stop public health authorities from proclaiming falsely that the vaccines were “approved” by the FDA.
For example, here in Michigan (where I am writing from), immediately after the emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine, the Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) began lying to the public that “The process used to approve the COVID‑19 vaccines is the same proven process that was used to create safe and effective vaccines for the flu, polio, measles, whooping cough and more.”[6]
That false claim illustrates that the state health department is either too incompetent or too dishonest to be trusted, and it is difficult to see how this could be attributed to incompetence when the FDA’s “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers”, which health care providers are required by law to provide to patients prior to administration of the vaccine, stated precisely the opposite.
The FDA fact sheets stated explicitly that “There is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID‑19.” They further stated that the COVID‑19 vaccine “has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA-approved or cleared product.”[7]
Taking their cue from the lying state health department, health care providers joined in the deception. McLaren Health Care, for example, repeated the health department’s false claim verbatim on its COVID‑19 vaccine information webpage.[8] So did Munson Healthcare on its “COVID‑19 Vaccine Safety” webpage.[9] Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan similarly lied that COVID‑19 vaccines were “approved” by the FDA and falsely reassured the public by quoting MDHHS Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, who lied that “The process for approval of a COVID‑19 vaccine is scientifically sound, and no steps have been skipped.”[10]
Attempts by health freedom advocates to combat the official disinformation were stifled by the self-proclaimed media “fact-checkers”. With staggering hypocrisy, a Reuters “Fact Check” article published on April 14, 2021, falsely claimed that it was “false” to claim that the vaccines are “experimental”, which incorrect conclusion was based on Reuters’ false claim that the vaccines were FDA “approved”.
Reuters also falsely claimed that it was “false” to say that clinical trials had not yet been completed, asserting that the “approved vaccines” all had “published results from the final phase three trials.” In fact, clinical trials were (and are) still ongoing, and it was only preliminary data that had been published and utilized for the purpose of emergency use authorization.[11]
On April 30, Reuters updated the article to acknowledge its error in having described the vaccines as “approved” yet persisted in its false claim that it was “not true” that they were “experimental”, as well as its false insinuation that phase three clinical trials had been “completed”.[12]
By contrast, the New York Times offered a rare passing acknowledgment on April 6 that each COVID‑19 vaccine was “still officially an experimental prophylaxis”.[13] An article in The BMJ on May 18 about the need for gathering more data on long-term effects from the ongoing clinical trials quoted Cody Meissner, a member of the FDA’s advisory committee that recommended the vaccines for emergency use authorization, saying, “Remember that currently these vaccines are still considered experimental.”[14]
Attempts to correct the record on Facebook were met with censorship, with users who told the truth having the distribution of their posts limited or being outright banned from the platform under a policy update in April that expressly prohibited “Claims that COVID‑19 vaccines . . . have not been approved”.[15]
At a press briefing on July 16, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki provided another illustration of the extraordinary dishonesty and hypocrisy. When asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to work with Facebook on the “flagging of disinformation”, she replied that they were “regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health” and working “to engage with them to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies.”
She went on to argue that if someone was banned from one social media platform for spreading “misinformation”, there should be a coordinated effort to ban them from all platforms. “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others”, she said, “if you—for providing misinformation out there.” It was “a life-or-death issue here, and so everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information.”
As an example of the supposed “misinformation” for which she was arguing that people should be banned from all social media platforms, she cited people who were “falsely alleging that mRNA vaccines are untested and, thus, risky, even though many of them are approved and have gone through the gold standard of the FDA approval process.”[16]
As she was speaking, the FDA’s fact sheets for recipients and caregivers continued to state that there was no FDA approved vaccine for COVID‑19 and that the vaccines authorized for emergency use had not undergone the same type of review as an FDA approved product.[17]
The claims that have been made about the inferiority of natural immunity must be understood in the context of this culture of official dishonesty, in which blatant lies that serve the political agenda are deemed acceptable and encouraged, while truths that don’t align with the agenda are euphemistically dubbed “misinformation” and censored to prevent informed consent for these pharmaceutical products from happening.
When it comes to the propaganda narrative as it relates to natural immunity, it is similarly not only government health officials doing the deceiving. The entire medical establishment has been complicit in the disinformation campaign, including many scientists, insurance companies, and health care providers.
Of course, the great deception could not be perpetrated without the complicity of the mainstream media establishment and major social media platforms, as well.
If the truth were told, what the public would have been learning all along is that natural immunity is robust, broad, durable, and superior to the immunity conferred by the COVID‑19 vaccines.
Rather than being told that infection confers immunity that may be weak and short-lived (or even non-existent), the public would have been informed that studies have shown that natural immunity is robust and likely to last for a long time, perhaps decades if not a lifetime.
Rather than being told that infection-recovered individuals still need to get vaccinated to boost their antibodies, the public would have been informed that antibodies do not equal immunity and that durable protection from SARS‑CoV‑2 is not dependent on the persistence of a high level of antibodies circulating in the blood.
Rather than being told that vaccines offer better protection against “variants of concern”, the public would have been informed that infection confers a much broader repertoire of immune responses to the coronavirus and hence that natural immunity is much more likely to be cross-protective against any genetic variants that are currently circulating or might emerge in the future.
While accepting the risk of vaccination might make sense for individuals at high risk for severe COVID-19, the risk-benefit analysis is not the same for those at low risk. While the public health establishment treats vaccination as a one-size-fits-all solution, calling upon everyone who is eligible to receive a vaccine to get one, there is always a need for an individual risk-benefit analysis.
The balance of risks versus benefits is simply not the same for young, healthy people—and certainly not for children, who are at remarkably low risk of getting severe disease or dying from COVID‑19.
Importantly, for individuals who have already acquired natural immunity, COVID‑19 vaccines pose a risk of harm without a proven benefit.
Furthermore, natural immunity must be considered an opportunity cost of vaccination.
It may be that if a vaccinated individual becomes infected with the virus that the pathogenic challenge will result in an expansion of their immunologic repertoire such that they will acquire the equivalent protection of natural immunity.
However, this may also not be the case. It may be that, once a person’s immune system is primed by vaccination, the immune response to any future encounters with the virus will be forever prejudiced in favor of suboptimal immunity.
In immunology, there are phenomena known as “original antigenic sin” and “linked-epitope suppression”.[18] Essentially, what can happen is that, once the immune system is primed to respond one way to a pathogen, it will continue to respond that way in the event of subsequent exposures, even if this means that the originally trained response is suboptimal for the newly infecting strain.
If such a phenomenon occurs with the immunity conferred by COVID‑19 vaccines, given the opportunity cost of natural immunity, the result for the vaccinated individual could be an increased susceptibility to SARS‑CoV‑2 infection throughout their lifetime.
At the population level, mass vaccination could also theoretically end up driving the evolution of “escape” mutants—variants that escape the suboptimal immunity conferred by the vaccines.
In the long-term, due to the opportunity cost of natural immunity, mass vaccination could end up impeding rather than contributing to the development of population or “herd” immunity that serves to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and death.
Ultimately, the right to informed consent for these pharmaceutical products is being systematically violated. People are making misinformed decisions to accept the shots. For the human rights violations to end and informed choice to become possible, it is essential that the deceitful propaganda being issued by the government, the media, and the pharma-centric medical establishment be thoroughly exposed and debunked.
In future installments of this series, we will do just that. In the next article, I will document the official ignorance of natural immunity, showing how the medical and media establishments have tried to downplay it even to the extent of acting as though there is no such thing.
[1] Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Takes Key Action in Fight Against COVID‑19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for First COVID‑19 Vaccine”, FDA.gov, December 11, 2020, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-key-action-fight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-first-covid-19.
[2] Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Takes Additional Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for Second COVID-19 Vaccine”, FDA.gov, December 18, 2020, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-additional-action-fight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-second-covid.
[3] Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Issues Emergency Use Authorization for Third COVID‑19 Vaccine”, FDA.gov, February 27, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-third-covid-19-vaccine.
[4] Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Approves First COVID‑19 Vaccine”, FDA.gov, August 23, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine.
[5] Food and Drug Administration, “Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines Explained”, FDA.gov, November 20, 2020, accessed September 1, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emergency-use-authorization-vaccines-explained. Food and Drug Administration, “Investigational New Drug (IND) Application”, FDA.gov, February 24, 2021, accessed September 1, 2021, https://www.fda.gov/drugs/types-applications/investigational-new-drug-ind-application.
[6] Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, “COVID‑19 Vaccines: Frequently Asked Questions”, December 13, 2020, archived on December 14, 2020, at https://web.archive.org/web/20201214170422/https://www.michigan.gov/documents/coronavirus/COVID-19_Vaccine_Public_FAQ_FINAL_710077_7.pdf.
[7] Food and Drug Administration, “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers: Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine to Prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‑19) in Individuals 16 Years of Age and Older”, FDA.gov, December 2020, archived on December 12, 2020, at https://web.archive.org/web/20201212030300/https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download. As noted in the FDA’s press release for the authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine, “The EUA also requires that fact sheets that provide important information, including dosing instructions, and information about the benefits and risks of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine, be made available to vaccination providers and vaccine recipients.” See: FDA, “FDA Takes Key Action in Fight Against COVID‑19”, previously cited.
[8] McLaren Health Care, “Covid‑19 Vaccination Update – Michigan”, McLaren.org, January 14, 2021, archived on January 27, 2021, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210127075010/https://www.mclaren.org/main/coronavirus-vaccine.
[9] Munson Healthcare, “COVID‑19 Vaccine Safety”, MunsonHealthcare.org, undated, archived on January 13, 2021, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210113000031/https://www.munsonhealthcare.org/community-health/covid19/covid19-vaccine/covid-19-vaccine-safety.
[10] Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, “COVID‑19 Vaccines: What You Should Note”, MIBluePerspectives.com, January 22, 2021, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210122213033/https://www.mibluesperspectives.com/2021/01/22/covid-19-vaccines-what-you-should-know/.
[11] “Fact Check- COVID-19 vaccines are not experimental and they have not skipped trial stages”, Reuters, April 14, 2021, archived on April 15, 2021, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210415163545/https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-vaccines-idUSL1N2M70MW.
[12] “CORRECTED-Fact Check- COVID-19 vaccines are not experimental and they have not skipped trial stages”, Reuters, updated April 30, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-vaccines-idUSL1N2M70MW.
[13] Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Adam Liptak, “Likely Legal, ‘Vaccine Passports’ Emerge as the Next Coronavirus Divide”, New York Times, April 6, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/politics/vaccine-passports-coronavirus.html.
[14] Peter Doshi, “Covid-19 vaccines: In the rush for regulatory approval, do we need more data?” The BMJ, May 18, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1244.
[15] Facebook, “COVID‑19 and Vaccine Policy Updates & Protections”, Facebook.com, updated April 2, 2021, archived on April 13, 2021, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210413171751/https://www.facebook.com/help/230764881494641/.
[16] The White House, “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, July 16, 2021”, WhiteHouse.gov, July 16, 2021, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210716235248/https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/07/16/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-july-16-2021/.
[17] FDA, “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers: Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine”, previously cited, archived on July 16, 2021, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210716140737/https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download.
[18] Vipin M. Vashishtha, “Is ‘original antigenic sin’ complicating Indian vaccination drive against Covid‑19?” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, June 29, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2021.1945904. Maryam Noori et al., “‘Original antigenic sin’: A potential threat beyond the development of booster vaccination against novel SARS-CoV-2 variants”, Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, May 3, 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8144803/. For an example of linked-epitope suppression, see: James D Cherry, “The 112-Year Odyssey of Pertussis and Pertussis Vaccines—Mistakes Made and Implications for the Future”, Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, February 22, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/jpids/piz005.
Thx Jeremy. Lots of layers of truth. The real disease might be herdthink. Is the consequence (extinction) inevitable now? Maybe Gates has an antidote (but not free)? I’m still on the fence: could other cofactors be part of sars cv2 exposure? Mostly ditto on the dumbingdown of our immune systems by vaccine. Your efforts appreciated!
Yes, there is definitely a pandemic of herdthink!
I support Jeremy Hammond’s thesis. I am somewhat of an iconoclastic emergency physician. I have decided to avoid the vaccine and am actively seeking ongoing exposure to the SC2 virus, but hopefully with small inoculum. I would never do this if I did not feel that there were effective early antiviral treatments available. (I’m in my 60s and the mortality risk is about 1% in my age group.) The specifics of which early treatments are helpful might be contentious, but several look strong to me. As a doctor, people with COVID come to me 6-8 times each day that I work. I started removing protective gear (PPE) about 3 months ago and now just wear a surgical mask. This has progressed. Once I know that a patient is COVID positive, I take my surgical mask off too, and go sit, barefaced, very close to them. Even with this intensive exposure I have not gotten clinically sick. I am pretty sure that those thus exposed run subclinical infections. One doctor documented the evolution of antibodies and T-Cell immunity without any history of clinical illness. I believe that this is a way out of the pandemic of fear being used to destroy our society.
That sounds almost like taking a traditional vaccine but without all the potentially harmful adjuvents. Maybe covid parties should be a “thing” for those who want it.
Given the superiority of natural immunity, giving people a low dose exposure under clinical observation is an idea that I think the medical community should consider.
There was also something recently published on MedRxiv showing the superiority of natural immunity over vaccine-induced, although it hasn’t been peer-reviewed unfortunately. I’ve been on the fence about getting this vax but it still comes down to it being an experimental vax, the first mRNA of its kind, and it’s only been administered to the public since the beginning of this year (technically Dec 2020). The Rotashield vax was administered for 9 months and finally withdrawn after 14 months when it was determined to potentially cause intussusception. Currently, I have no comorbidities and keep up my health, which isn’t full-proof I know, but my employer just issued its edict today, after Biden’s pronouncement, that all employees being vaxxed by mid-October, unless you can show proof of a medical reason or apply for an exemption for “sincerely held religious beliefs”. How does one even show that? Guess I have to brush up on scripture. Talk about coercion.
Yes, I’ve read that study and have also debunked the fake news claiming that it showed that vaccination of naturally immune individuals provides a protective benefit:
https://twitter.com/jeremyrhammond/status/1431968036706263042