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Fact Checking the ‘Fact Checkers’ on Natural Immunity to SARS-CoV-2

by Nov 29, 2021Economic Freedom, Health Freedom, Special Reports4 comments

Entrance to the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia (Daniel Mayer/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The “fact checkers” are ridiculously telling us that we must completely ignore the scientific literature and instead accept the CDC’s proclamations as gospel truth.

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Introduction

On November 1, I was notified by Facebook that a post of mine had been deleted on the grounds that it didn’t follow “Community Standards”, which prohibit “misinformation” about COVID-19 vaccines. My deleted post consisted of the observation that the “public health” establishment has been claiming that people who’ve recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection still need to get a COVID-19 vaccine because natural immunity is inferior, along with the observation that this claim is false.

I supported my counterclaim by linking to the introductory installment of an ongoing series of fully referenced articles I’m producing to document how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other “public health” authorities have been willfully lying to the public, which is demonstrable by simply contrasting what the authorities have been telling us with what the science has been telling us.

Facebook censorship - natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2
On November 1, 2021, Facebook notified me that a truthful post of mine had been censored.

On Twitter on November 9, I observed the social media company telling users that “COVID-19 vaccines are more effective than natural immunity, the CDC and fact-checkers say”. As told by Twitter, the CDC “said that a study showed vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity gained from prior infection, which wanes over time”—thus implying that natural immunity is short-lived while the protection offered by COVID-19 vaccines does not wane over time.

Twitter censorship - natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2
Twitter misinforms users that natural immunity is inferior to that induced by COVID-19 vaccines.

Scrolling down a bit further, I was treated by Twitter to the statement that “COVID-19 vaccines provide stronger and longer-lasting protection than natural immunity, according to the CDC”. (This was truthful enough inasmuch as the CDC does make that claim.)

Twitter followed that immediately with the statement that “Experts caution that having COVID-19 does not guarantee antibodies, while the vaccines have been shown to offer protection against serious infections and death, the AP reported”.

Twitter censorship - COVID-19 vaccines
To support its false claim that natural immunity is inferior, Twitter cites the CDC and an AP “fact check” article citing the CDC.

Thus, Twitter presents the AP article as though it represents independent corroboration of the CDC’s claim, as though the AP had examined the scientific literature and determined that the CDC’s claim was indeed a scientifically proven fact.

Twitter is also implicitly claiming that immunity equals antibodies, that vaccination does guarantee protection, and that natural immunity does not offer protection against reinfection leading to hospitalization and death.

The implicit claim that vaccination guarantees protection is contradicted by the manufacturers themselves, who disclose in their product inserts or FDA fact sheets that their respective products “may not protect all vaccine recipients.” (We’ll come to how ridiculous and totally dishonest the rest of Twitter’s claims are, also.)

Scrolling down a bit further, I came to the AP’s “fact check” post, which states, “Posts continue to circulate online falsely claiming that COVID-19 survivors don’t need vaccines because of natural immunity. In fact, protection is variable and not long-lasting, so vaccines are still recommended.”

AP "fact check", censorship of COVID-19 vaccine truths
An AP “fact check” post on Twitter falsely claims that natural immunity is inferior.

By juxtaposing the description of natural immunity as “variable and not long-lasting” with the supposedly superior immunity from vaccines, the AP is implicitly claiming that the immunity from vaccines is not variable and is long-lasting.

The truth, of course, is that “variable and not long-lasting” could just as well describe vaccine-induced immunity. The difference is that, with vaccine-induced immunity, the description “not long-lasting” is supported by scientific evidence, whereas the claim that natural immunity is “not long-lasting” is demonstrably false.

The AP’s Twitter post links to its “fact check” article, which proclaims that it is “False” that vaccination is unnecessary for people who already have natural immunity, which is to say that the AP claims that it is a scientifically proven fact that people with natural immunity require vaccination to be protected against COVID-19.

The AP’s conclusion is entirely dependent on its premise that infection induces only “short-term immunity” that rapidly “fades over time”. That premise is false.

The False Premise that Natural Immunity Is Short-Lived

In an essential Brownstone Institute article originally published on October 17 and repeatedly updated, Dr. Paul E. Alexander has compiled an ever growing list of studies, presently at 135, which constitutes a large body of evidence incontrovertibly demonstrating that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is robust, broad, and durable.

In a Brownstone Institute article published on November 7, Dr. Vinay Prasad appropriately asked whom the “fact checkers” are really working for, presenting the example of the “AP Fact Check” post on Twitter. Indeed, whom are they truly serving? Is this AP “fact check” an example of journalism? Did it involve scholarly research to verify that the CDC’s claim is supported by the scientific literature?

Instructively, we can see that to support its claim that natural immunity is short-lived, the AP cites a single source: the CDC, which, as I will demonstrate momentarily, has been lying from the start about the protectiveness of natural immunity. The AP “fact check” completely ignores literally all of the non-CDC-originating scientific literature, which willful ignorance is necessitated by the fact that the CDC’s claim is belied by the scientific evidence.

“[T]he preponderance of evidence suggests that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infections is durable following acute infections.”

As accurately observed in a review of what is known about immunity to SARS-CoV-2 published in Advances in Immunology on September 10, 2021, “the preponderance of evidence suggests that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infections is durable following acute infections.” Studies have “demonstrated very low rates of SARS-CoV-2 reinfections in recovered individuals.” These findings “are consistent with” observations that in individuals who recovered from infection with the related coronavirus SARS “neutralizing antibodies were still detected 17 years after infection.”

The AP’s conclusion that everyone with natural immunity requires vaccination for protection is logically invalid because its premise is false.

What the AP has done with this “fact check” is not journalism but political advocacy. Rather than properly informing the public, the AP is serving to manufacture consent for the government’s policy goal of achieving high vaccine uptake, including vaccination of those who have already acquired immunity through infection. The AP is simply repeating dogma proclaimed by the high priests of the vaccine religion and ludicrously passing it off as a “fact check”.

But just as the invention of the printing press enabled the literate masses for the first time to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, today we have the internet and direct access to the scientific literature (such as via PubMed.gov). And we can see for ourselves that what the government and media say science says about natural versus vaccine-induced immunity and what science actually tells us are two completely different things.

I said I’d demonstrate how the CDC has been lying from the start, so let’s get to it. Back in December 2020, after COVID-19 vaccines first received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC was claiming that the “evidence suggests natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long”.

A few months earlier, on October 15, 2020, The Lancet had published a statement purporting to present an “evidence-based consensus” on what was known about immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Listed as one of the authors was Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who replaced Dr. Robert Redfield as CDC director in January 2021. Walensky and her coauthors claimed that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection” and that, consequently, herd immunity could only be achieved through mass vaccination. The implicit message was that we could be assured that COVID-19 vaccines would induce superior immunity that would be long-lasting and prevent transmission of the virus.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky (Public Domain)
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky (Public Domain)

Indeed, throughout the summer and fall of 2020, the public was bombarded with alarmist media headlines proclaiming that scientists were finding that natural immunity wanes rapidly. These headlines were based on studies finding that antibody levels in the blood of people who had recovered from COVID-19 were rapidly disappearing. The conclusion that immunity was very short in duration was premised on the equation of “immunity” to “antibodies”.

However, as every immunologist knew at the time, and as every honest scientist who spoke to the media explained (typically buried deep into the articles, if appearing at all, and drowned out by the loud fearmongering about rapidly lost immunity), that conclusion was fallacious because circulating antibodies do not equal immunity.

In addition to humoral immunity, which refers to the protection offered by circulating antibodies, there are also mechanisms of cellular immunity and immunological memory. Just because someone’s antibody titer wanes rapidly from a peak level reached after infection did not mean that people were losing their immunity. In fact, an initial rapid decline is precisely what we would expect to happen and is perfectly consistent with long-term immunity. This is basic immunology.

Moreover, early findings of disappearing antibodies were falsified by other studies using more sensitive and specific tests that found that, after a normal rapid decline from peak levels, the decay rate slowed, and antibody titers in recovered individuals plateaued and persisted.

In fact, at the time Walensky was claiming that there was “no evidence” that natural immunity would provide lasting protection, scientific research had already shown that the vast majority of individuals with COVID-19 experience a robust antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 and that, after the initial decline, levels plateaued and were remaining relatively stable over time.

In some recovered patients, antibody levels were even observed to increase between one to three months post-infection, indicating that antibody production had shifted from short-lived plasmablasts to long-lived plasma cells residing in the bone marrow—an immunological marker of long-term immunity.

Likewise, of course, by the time the FDA authorized the first COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use and the CDC began telling the public that the evidence indicated that natural immunity is short-lived, studies had already shown that neutralizing antibodies were persisting in the blood of the majority of individuals who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection, with detectable titers through at least eight months of follow-up observation.

On December 30, 2020, the CDC removed the false claim from its website that the scientific evidence suggested that “natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long”. However, instead of updating the page to properly inform the public that the evidence indicated that natural immunity was robust and probably long-lived, the CDC continued to deliberately deceive by saying that people who’ve recovered “still need to get vaccinated” because scientists “do not yet know how long someone is protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19.”

It was of course true that scientists did not yet know how long natural immunity generally lasts, and we still do not know. What the CDC’s statement obfuscates is that the simple reason for this lack of knowledge is that robust immunity has been shown to endure in the vast majority of people who recover from infection for as long as observations have been made.

To put it another way, what the CDC means when it says we do not know how long natural immunity lasts is that, to date, for the vast majority of people who have recovered from infection, there has been no observation of significant waning of natural immunity.

The CDC’s conclusion that vaccination is necessary for those with prior immunity did not follow from its premise. Just because the duration of natural immunity had yet to be determined did not mean that it is not durable. The CDC’s argument was a non sequitur fallacy. Its recommendation was illogical.

The CDC was also lying by omission. What the CDC was deliberately withholding from the public with its message that natural immunity may be weak and short-lived was the fact that the scientific evidence strongly indicated that natural immunity was strong and probably long-lasting.

To this day, the CDC continues to argue that vaccination is required for people who recover from infection on the grounds that the duration of natural immunity is unknown. On August 19, the CDC took a leap further, adding the claim that there was emerging evidence “that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19.”

NIAID Director and Chief Medical Adviser to President Biden Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky hold a White House press briefing on August 2, 2021 (White House/PUblic Domain)
NIAID Director and Chief Medical Adviser to President Biden Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky hold a White House press briefing on August 2, 2021 (White House/Public Domain)

In truth, the accumulating evidence was growing—and has continued to grow—ever more divergent from the CDC’s public messaging. On May 24, 2021, a study by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine was published in the journal Nature confirming that infection confers durable immunological memory, with induction of long-lived bone marrow plasma cells capable of rapidly churning out high-affinity antibodies as needed in the event of re-exposure to SARS-CoV-2. The authors remarked that their finding demonstrated that “SARS-CoV-2 infection induces a robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune response in humans.”

An accompanying commentary in Nature reported the study’s findings under the headline “Had COVID? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime.” The article summarized the key takeaway from the study, which was that many people who recover from infection “will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives.” The study’s findings demonstrated that “immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting.”

“SARS-CoV-2 infection induces a robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune response in humans.”

The CDC wants us to toss such findings down the memory hole. While natural immunity is durable, the CDC’s recollection of scientific findings it doesn’t like is certainly short-lived.

Since the CDC began claiming that people who recover from SARS-CoV-2 infection need to get vaccinated because natural immunity offered insufficient and possibly short-lived protection, studies demonstrating the strength and durability of natural immunity have continued to pile up.

With respect to humoral immunity, many studies have shown that neutralizing antibodies persist for as long as observations have been made in the vast majority of people who recover from infection, with continued evolution of memory B cell responses over time. (For examples, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

In comparison, studies have consistently shown that the humoral immunity induced by COVID-19 vaccines is significantly less durable. (For examples, see here, here, here, and here.)

Of course, as with natural immunity, just because vaccinated individuals’ antibody levels wane over time does not necessarily mean that they are losing their immunity. However, studies looking at the respective effectiveness of natural and vaccine-conferred immunity and affirming the superiority of natural immunity have also continued to mount.

In a study published in the Lancet journal EClinicalMedicine, researchers from Qatar examined rates of reinfection after seven months of follow up and conservatively estimated the effectiveness of natural infection at 95 percent, with “no evidence of waning of protective immunity”. The authors concluded that “Evidence of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, regardless of the biomarker used to assess infection, appears sufficient to indicate protection against reinfection.” (Emphasis added.)

“Evidence of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, regardless of the biomarker used to assess infection, appears sufficient to indicate protection against reinfection.”

That finding contrasts with the CDC’s acknowledgment that the protectiveness the vaccines offer against infection wanes after several months, which has prompted the debate about whether to recommend “booster” shots.

Israeli researchers directly compared immunity from infection versus vaccination in a study published on the preprint server medRxiv on August 25, 2021. (A preprint is a study being published in advance, prior to having undergone the peer review process.) The authors directly compared the rate of reinfection among people with natural immunity with the rate of “breakthrough” infection among those with vaccine-conferred immunity and found that vaccinated individuals had a thirteen-fold greater risk of infection with the now-predominant Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. The increased risk among vaccinated people remained significantly greater when limiting the analysis to symptomatic infection, and vaccinated people had a higher risk of hospitalization as well.

Additionally, affirming the findings of a study by researchers from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, the Israeli study found no significant benefit of vaccination for individuals with pre-existing natural immunity (contrary to false claims in the media that it found such a benefit).

On the other hand, when including people in their analysis who were vaccinated and then infected, the result was a statistically significant reduced risk of subsequent reinfection, suggesting that “breakthrough” infection serves as a natural booster for vaccinated individuals (although data from the UK indicate that when this occurs, antibodies against the nucleocapsid protein are relatively lower, which is suggestive that the phenomenon of “original antigenic sin” is occurring to some extent).

A Lancet preprint by Swedish researchers published on October 25 found that the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against infection waned significantly after six months. Effectiveness for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine waned from 92 percent during the first month to 47 percent between four and six months, with no significant effectiveness after seven months. The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine performed slightly better, with effectiveness waning from 92 percent to 59 percent after six months.

The study also found that infection against severe COVID-19, as measured by the outcomes of hospitalization or death, also waned significantly, from 89 percent during the first month to 42 percent after six months, with the greatest loss of protection occurring among those at highest risk of severe COVID-19.

In fact, the data presented in the study showed that, by about eight months post-vaccination, there was negative effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against infection. While this result was not statistically significant, with confidence intervals on either size of zero, the data showed a clear trend of continually falling vaccine effectiveness.

COVID-19 vaccine waning immunity
A graph from the Lancet preprint by Swedish researchers showing the rapid waning of immunity induced by COVID-19 vaccines.

Of course, it makes perfect sense that natural immunity is more protective than the immunity induced by vaccines. In addition to a broader array of antibodies (including against the nucleocapsid protein), natural immunity also induces a broader array of cellular immune responses. Studies have shown that infected individuals who have mild symptoms or no clinical disease at all and who never even develop a detectable level of antibodies are still able to efficiently clear the infection due to effective cellular immunity.

We’re told by the “public health” establishment that we need a high level of antibodies to be protected against the disease. In fact, higher antibody titers are associated with more severe COVID-19, and this association exists independently from age.

“[A]ntibodies don’t seem to play an important role in controlling acute COVID-19. Instead, T cells and helper T cells in particular are associated with protective immune responses.”

According to La Jolla Institute for Immunology, “the bulk of evidence” points toward “a much bigger role for T cells than antibodies”. While playing a role in preventing SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells, “antibodies don’t seem to play an important role in controlling acute COVID-19. Instead, T cells and helper T cells in particular are associated with protective immune responses.”

Many people have cross-reactive T cell responses due to prior exposure to common human coronaviruses that cause the common cold, which may moderate COVID-19 severity, and in some individuals this cellular immunity appears sufficient to even prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2.

In contrast to natural immunity, in which immune responses are directed against the whole virus, including the nucleocapsid and membrane proteins, the humoral and cellular immune responses induced by vaccination are directed against the spike protein only (and the original now-extinct Wuhan strain of the virus at that).

The different routes of exposure also have an impact on the immune response. Researchers have observed that this results in vaccines inducing immunity that is suboptimal compared to natural immunity, including suboptimal mucosal immunity that is important for the prevention of transmission of the virus.

In fact, it’s no secret among scientists that the vaccines were not designed to prevent infection and transmission. There was hope but not a high expectation that they would do so. That explains why Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine developer at the Baylor College of Medicine, predicted prior to the FDA’s first emergency use authorization that the vaccines undergoing clinical trials “may be only partially protective to reduce severity of illness and won’t stop transmission anyway.”

As a study published in the journal Science notes, the vaccines were intended to “minimize COVID-19 disease severity to ‘common cold’ or asymptomatic disease.”

The clinical trials weren’t designed to determine the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection and transmission (or even against severe disease and death, for that matter); instead, the primary outcome measured was one or more symptoms plus a positive PCR test.

Coming back to the AP “fact check” article, we are supposed to ignore all of the science other than research done by the CDC, which of course has a major conflict of interest: a motivation to produce data specifically to support its predetermined policies and to ignore all evidence that does not.

This propensity of the CDC to cherry-pick and mislead is also recognized in the literature. As observed in a systematic review and meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration, which concluded that the CDC’s recommendation for healthy adults to get an annual flu shot was unsupported by the available evidence, policymakers at the CDC “clearly do not weight interpretation by quality of evidence, but quote anything that supports their theory.”

It’s not just that we’re supposed to ignore the mountains of evidence contradicting the CDC’s claim that natural immunity is weak and inferior. We’re not even supposed to know this evidence exists. By the AP’s standard, “the science” is whatever the CDC says it is. The CDC’s word is gospel truth. All non-CDC research is irrelevant, unworthy even an acknowledgment of its existence, much less of serious consideration.

The CDC’s confirmation bias is also evident in how it misrepresents its own research. Instructively, the AP accepted the CDC’s word as gospel even though the study upon which the CDC was basing its claim did not even compare the effectiveness of natural immunity with vaccine-induced immunity. In fact, the number of subjects included in the study whose immune systems were primed by vaccination rather than by infection was precisely zero.

But rather than fact-checking the CDC’s claim and properly informing readers that no conclusions can be drawn from that study about the effectiveness of natural versus vaccine-induced immunity, the AP chose to ignore the CDC’s error and present its logically invalid conclusion to readers as though a scientifically proven fact. The AP magically transformed a non sequitur fallacy into a “fact” that could be weaponized to censor those who insist on telling the truth rather than mindlessly parroting the government’s official dogma.

The CDC has since published a second study looking at vaccination status of hospitalized patients that it is citing to support its claim that vaccines confer superior immunity. Fundamental problems with that study have been elucidated by epidemiologist and infectious disease expert Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who is also the senior scientific director of the Brownstone Institute. As Kulldorff explains, the CDC study does not answer the question of whether recovery from infection or vaccination is more effective at reducing the risk of subsequently getting COVID-19. Instead, the question it answers is “whether vaccination or Covid recovery is more related to Covid hospitalization or if it is more related to other respiratory type hospitalizations.”

Logically, one cannot draw conclusions about the effectiveness of natural versus vaccine-induced immunity based on a study that excluded everyone whose immunity protected them from being hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms and testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The CDC study was also specifically designed to look only at short-term immunity and to avoid any measurement of the effects of waning vaccine-induced immunity. (The CDC authors are quite candid about this, directly comparing their decision to limit time since vaccination to 180 days with the Israeli study that looked at vaccine effectiveness after six months.)

Rating the “Fact Checkers” Claims about Natural Immunity

The AP and other “fact checkers” would have us believe, based entirely on the word of the CDC, that the science is settled that the immunity conferred by vaccination is superior to natural immunity. That claim is demonstrably false.

The opposite argument, that natural immunity is superior, can easily be made, and with a great deal more and stronger supporting evidence from the scientific literature. Indeed, the conclusion that natural immunity is superior seems incontrovertible. At the very least, it is incumbent upon the AP and other “fact checkers” to acknowledge that the CDC’s claim is controversial and inconsistent with the preponderance of scientific evidence.

But that would require a modicum of honesty and journalistic integrity, which unfortunately is all too rare in the news media these days. The implications for individuals’ ability to meaningfully exercise their right to informed consent—especially given the government’s efforts to coerce even those who are already immune to get all the recommended doses of one of these risk-carrying pharmaceutical products—are grave.

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  • Marilyn Hagerman says:

    Uncensored world renowned doctors, scientists and countless studies done with integrity convey truthfully the high value of natural immunity, it’s lifelong lasting defence, and the uselessness of these experimental injections being incorrectly referred to as “vaccines”.

    To attempt to undermine these studies and discredit intellectually superior and honest professionals is to attest to the stupidity, diabolical intent and outright fear-mongering-lies of those pitiful and disgusting individuals.

  • Edwin Pyle says:

    Thx and yes, incredibly detailed with links…now….how to get Joepublic to read / comprehend? (I’ve copied and pasted … )

    • I think the trick is just to point out to people that the claim that natural immunity is short-lived is contradicted by the preponderance of scientific evidence. As long as their minds are open enough to take a look at the actual science, you can point them to the documentation. And if their minds are so closed they refuse to accept the possibility they are being lied to about what the science says, then they are hopeless and we need to move on to those who can be helped.

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