UN Document: COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Are Not About Public Health

Introduction

A non-governmental organization (NGO) has submitted a written statement that I authored to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) illustrating why government policies seeking to coerce people into getting a COVID-19 vaccine are not about public health, but about power, control, and profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

The statement has now been published as UN General Assembly document “A/HRC/49/NGO/66”, dated February 17, 2022, and titled “COVID-19: Vaccine Mandates Are Not About Public Health”.

The NGO is the Planetary Association for Clean Energy, Inc. (PACE), whose mission is “to facilitate the discovery, research, development, demonstration and evaluation of clean energy systems.” The group has Special Consultative status with the Economic and Social council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

I have no affiliation with PACE apart from someone from the group having initially reached out to me in the summer of 2020 to see if I might be interested in writing up a short document expressing public concerns about governmental policies related to vaccines, which document would be submitted as a written statement to the UN Human Rights Council.

At the time, you will recall, much of the world was under extreme “lockdown” measures imposed by governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As I had been observing, the explicitly stated endgame of the lockdowns was mass vaccination with new pharmaceutical products that would be rapidly developed and marketed.

I had also been warning that the logical corollary of this policy aim was that the population would be coerced into accepting these newly developed products, whether by threatening continued lockdown measures with a “passport” system enabling only vaccinated individuals to exercise freedom or by direct mandates arising from legislative or regulatory actions.

So, I decided to accept the invitation and use the opportunity to deliver a reminder to the UN and its members states that they are legally obligated to uphold the right to informed consent and to rebuke them for instead grossly violating that fundamental human right.

The result was UN General Assembly document “A/HRC/45/NGO/43”, dated September 14, 2020, and titled “Vaccine Mandates Violate the Right to Informed Consent”.

I was approached again more recently to author another written statement and so took the opportunity to follow up by focusing on COVID-19 vaccine mandates; reminding the UN and its members once again of their duty to uphold the right to informed consent; rebuking them for instead violating that right; and elucidating with the example of the US why it logically cannot be true that the primary goal of such mandates is the betterment of public health.

You can click the links above to read each document. (I’ve learned from experience that sometimes links to UN documents can be funky and will not always work to load the document for you. If clicking the links doesn’t work for you, try right clicking, selecting to copy the hyperlink, and then pasting it into a new browser tab. If that still doesn’t work, head to https://undocs.org/ and append the URL by pasting in the document name. So, for the more recent of the two documents, you would copy “A/HRC/49/NGO/66”, without the quotation marks, and paste it into the end of that URL. You can use the UNdocs.org website that way to search for any UN documents by their name.)

I’m also reproducing the full text of each statement, along with the references, here:

Vaccine Mandates Violate the Right to Informed Consent

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared pandemic status for COVID-19, the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome [coronavirus] 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Governments responded by implementing unprecedented “lockdown” measures globally with no clear exit strategy apart from the stated goal of rapidly developing a vaccine.[1] Concurrently, advocates of this hypothetical solution have called for lawmakers to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory.[2]

However, compulsory vaccination violates the right to informed consent, one of the most fundamental ethics in medicine and a human right recognized under international law, including the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights of 2005, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol of 2006 and under internationally recognized agreements such as the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects of 2002, and the World Medical Association Declaration Of Helsinki of 1964, revised in 2013.

The United Nations (UN) and WHO are legally obligated to uphold the right to informed consent yet have instead been complicit in violating it.

For example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) praised the Maldives government for passing a law in November 2019 that effectively outlawed the exercise of the right to informed consent by threatening parents with prosecution for non-compliance with public vaccine policy.[3]

In January 2020, two articles in The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) revealed that WHO had been sponsoring a malaria vaccine trial that included 720,000 children in three African countries without having ensured that the prior informed consent of the parents had been obtained. Most egregiously, parents had not been informed that earlier trials had found the vaccine to be associated with an increased risk of childhood mortality, particularly among girls. [4]

WHO also promotes the diphtheria, tetanus, and whole-cell pertussis (DTP) vaccine in global vaccination campaigns, despite the best available scientific evidence showing it to be associated with an increased rate of childhood mortality. While the vaccine may protect against the target diseases, it appears to detrimentally affect the immune system in a way that makes children more vulnerable to other diseases. This “non-specific effect” has been found to be true for non-live vaccine generally.[5]

WHO is aware of the evidence, but has dismissed it on the grounds that it comes from observational studies, which are prone to selection bias. However, WHO accepts the findings of observational studies showing beneficial non-specific effects of measles vaccination.[6]

Additionally, the members of the WHO committee tasked with reviewing the evidence had conflicts of interest, including three having ties to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the manufacturers of DTP vaccines and the manufacturer of the experimental malaria vaccine.[7]

WHO also receives funding from vaccine manufacturers, including GSK, Sanofi, and Merck.[8] The single largest source of funding for WHO presently is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promotes vaccines while holding investments in vaccine manufacturers including GSK, Sanofi, and Merck.[9]

The public is repeatedly assured by public health officials and the media that “vaccines are safe and effective”, but in the absence of randomized placebo-controlled trials comparing long-term health outcomes, including mortality, between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, that statement is not justifiable.

Vaccines do not undergo such trials before licensing. Nor are whole vaccine schedules studied for safety. With respect to the routine childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Institute of Medicine in 2013 observed that “studies designed to examine the long-term effects of the cumulative number of vaccines or other aspects of the immunization schedule have not been conducted.”[10]

There are many legitimate concerns about vaccines in addition to their non-specific effects. Policymakers do not consider the opportunity costs of vaccination, such as the superiority of immunity acquired naturally compared to that conferred by vaccination.

For example, studies have found that having a flu shot annually could increase the risk of infection with novel influenza strains, as well as with non-influenza viruses, in part due to the lost opportunity to acquire the cross-protective, cell-mediated immunity conferred by infection.[11]

A complementary hypothesis is the phenomenon of “original antigenic sin”, whereby the first experience of the immune system with an antigen determines future responses. Priming the immune system with antigen components of the influenza vaccine could potentially cause a mismatched antibody response to strains that the vaccine is not designed to protect against, thereby increasing the risk of infection as compared to an immune response in which naive T and B cells are instructed to fight off the infecting virus.[12]

This phenomenon might help explain an increased risk of serious dengue infection among Filipino children who received the dengue vaccine and who had not already experienced a prior infection. This finding led the Philippines to the withdrawal of the vaccine, which the government had implemented into its childhood schedule upon the recommendation of WHO, despite earlier data having indicated that the vaccine might cause precisely that outcome.[13]

A related hypothesis is that of “antibody dependent enhancement” (ADE), whereby vaccine-induced antibodies, instead of protecting the individual from subsequent infection, enhance the infection and thereby increase the risk of severe disease.[14]

Attempts to develop a vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) were impeded by this phenomenon, whereby vaccinated animals were found to be at increased risk of viral infection. This past experience has raised concerns about the potential for ADE with vaccines under development for SARS-CoV-2.[15]

As another example of opportunity cost, surviving measles is associated with a reduced rate of all-cause mortality in children, and this survival benefit appears to more than offset measles deaths in populations with a low mortality rate from acute measles infection.[16]

Additionally, measles infection has been observed to cause regression of cancer in children and has been associated with a decreased risk of numerous diseases later in life, including degenerative bone disease, certain tumours, Parkinson’s disease, allergic disease, chronic lymphoid leukaemia, both non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Hodgkin lymphoma, and cardiovascular disease.[17]

Other infections have also been associated with health benefits, such as a reduced risk of leukaemia among children who experience Haemophilus influenzae type b infection during early childhood.[18]

There is also the potential for mass vaccination to put evolutionary pressure on pathogens, as has been seen with the diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine, and the emergence of pertussis strains lacking pertactin, a key antigen component of the vaccine. According to CDC, such strains “may have a selective advantage in infecting DTaP-vaccinated persons.”[19]

Population effects of vaccination must be considered in addition to their effects on individuals. Data suggest that the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine has not been cost-effective but has rather increased health care costs due to the inferiority of vaccine-conferred immunity. This is because mass vaccination appears to have shifted the risk burden away from children, in whom it is generally a benign illness, and onto adolescents and adults, who are at greater risk of complications. Due to the loss of immunologic boosting from repeated exposures, elderly people who had chicken pox as children are at greater risk of shingles. But rather than reconsider existing recommendations, policymakers respond to this problem by recommending a shingles vaccine for the elderly.[20]

In the US, many parents are concerned that manufacturers of vaccines recommended by CDC for routine use in childhood enjoy legal immunity from injury lawsuits because this represents a disincentive to pharmaceutical companies in terms of developing safer and more effective means of disease prevention. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) of the US government effectively shifts the financial burden for vaccine injuries away from the industry and onto taxpaying consumers.[21]

Another major problem is that policymakers treat vaccination as a one-size-fits-all solution to disease prevention, when the science is unequivocal in establishing that a risk-benefit analysis must be carried out for each vaccine and each individual. Not everyone is at the same risk from the target disease, and not everyone is at the same risk of harm from the vaccine.

For example, children with a mitochondrial disorder may be at increased risk of vaccine injury. In one case adjudicated under the VICP, the US government acknowledged that vaccinations can cause brain damage manifesting as symptoms of autism.[22]

In a 2018 interview, the director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office acknowledged the possibility that vaccines could cause autism in genetically susceptible children but stated that it was “hard to predict who those children might be.”[23]

Legislators do not have the specialized knowledge required to conduct the necessary risk-benefit analysis of the individual. Only the individual, or in the case of a child, the parents, possess that knowledge.

All vaccines carry risks. Compulsory vaccination constitutes a gross violation of the right to informed consent. Governments urgently need to orient health policies towards protecting rather than violating this human right.

References

[1] Neil M Ferguson et al., “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand,” Imperial College London, March 16, 2020, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf.  

[2] Dort R. Reiss and Arthur L. Caplan, “Considerations in Mandating a New Covid-19 Vaccine in the USA for Children and Adults”, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, May 8, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsaa025.   

New York State Bar Association, “Report of the New York State Bar Association’s Health Law Section: Task Force on COVID-19,” May 13, 2020, https://nysba.org/app/uploads/2020/05/HealthLawSectionTaskForceCOVID-19Report_5.13.20.pdf.

Spence Neale, “‘Power’ to ‘plunge a needle into your arm’: Dershowitz says forced vaccinations are constitutional”, Washington Examiner, May 19, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/power-to-plunge-a-needle-into-your-arm-dershowitz-says-forced-vaccinations-are-constitutional.

Lawrence O. Gostin and Daniel A. Salmon, “The Dual Epidemics of COVID-19 and Influenza: Vaccine Acceptance, Coverage, and Mandates,” JAMA, June 11, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.10802.

Dr. Michael Lederman, Maxwell J. Mehlman, and Dr. Stuart Youngner, “Defeat Covid-19 by requiring vaccination for all. It’s not un-American, it’s patriotic,” USA Today, August 6, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/06/stop-coronavirus-compulsory-universal-vaccination-column/3289948001/.

[3] UNICEF Maldives, November 14, 2019, https://twitter.com/UNICEFMaldives/status/1194926669502590979.

Republic of Maldives, “President signs bills on Child Rights Protection and Juvenile Justice into law,” President’s Office, November 20, 2019, https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/22631.

“President ratifies landmark child protection laws,” Maldives Independent, November 21, 2019, https://maldivesindependent.com/society/president-ratifies-landmark-child-protection-laws-149361.

Hussain Shameem, January 29, 2020, https://twitter.com/HuShameem/status/1222464632989741058.

UN Children’s Fund, “Maldives ratifies Child Rights Protection Act,” Press Release, February 20, 2020, https://www.unicef.org/maldives/press-releases/maldives-ratifies-child-rights-protection-act.

[4] Peter Aaby et al., “WHO’s rollout of malaria vaccine in Africa: can safety questions be answered after only 24 months?” BMJ, January 24, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6920.

Peter Doshi, “WHO’s malaria vaccine study represents a ‘serious breach of international ethical standards,’” The BMJ, February 26, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m734.

[5] Søren Wengel Mogensen et al., “The Introduction of Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis and Oral Polio Vaccine Among Young Infants in an Urban African Community: A Natural Experiment,” EBioMedicine, January 31, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.01.041.

Peter Aaby et al., “Evidence of Increase in Mortality After the Introduction of Diphtheria–Tetanus–Pertussis Vaccine to Children Aged 6–35 Months in Guinea-Bissau: A Time for Reflection?” Frontiers in Public Health, March 19, 2018, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00079.

Peter C. Gøtzsche, “Expert Report: Effect of DTP Vaccines on Mortality in Children in Low-Income Countries”, Vaccine Science Foundation, August 12, 2019, https://vaccinescience.org/expert-report-effect-of-dtp-vaccines-on-mortality-in-children-in-low-income-countries/.  

[6] Gøtzsche.

[7] Gøtzsche.

[8] World Health Organization, “Contributors,” accessed August 11, 2020, http://open.who.int/2020-21/contributors/overview/vcs.  

[9] Tim Schwab, “Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox,” The Nation, March 17, 2020, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/.  

[10] Institute of Medicine, The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013), p. 6; https://doi.org/10.17226/13563.

[11] Danuta M. Skowronski et al., “Association between the 2008–09 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Pandemic H1N1 Illness during Spring–Summer 2009: Four Observational Studies from Canada”, PLoS Medicine, April 6, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258.

Rogier Bodewes et al, “Annual Vaccination against Influenza Virus Hampers Development of Virus-Specific CD8+ T Cell Immunity in Children”, Journal of Virology, November 2011, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209321/.  

[12] Skowronski et al.

[13] Jacky Flipse and Jolanda M. Smit, “The Complexity of a Dengue Vaccine: A Review of the Human Antibody Response,” PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, June 11, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0003749.

Seema Yasmin and Madhusree Mukerjee, “How the World’s First Dengue Vaccination Drive Ended in Disaster,” Scientific American, April 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-worlds-first-dengue-vaccination-drive-ended-in-disaster/.  

[14] Pallaval Veera Bramhachari, “Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Viral Infections,” Dynamics of Immune Activation in Viral Diseases, November 5, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7119964/.  

[15] Nikolai Eroshenko et al., “Implications of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection for SARS-CoV-2 countermeasures,” Nature Biotechnology, June 45, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0577-1.

Ann M. Arvin et al., “A perspective on potential antibody-dependent enhancement of SARS-CoV-2,” Nature, July 13, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2538-8.

[16] Peter Aaby et al., “Low mortality after mild measles infection compared to uninfected children in rural west Africa,” Vaccine, November 22, 2002, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0264-410X(02)00430-9.

Søren Wengel Mogensen et al., “Introduction of standard measles vaccination in an urban African community in 1979 and overall child survival: a reanalysis of data from a cohort study,” BMJ Open, December 20, 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5223649/.

Christine Stabell Benn, “How to evaluate potential non-specific effects of vaccines: the quest for randomized trials or time for triangulation?” Expert Review of Vaccines, May 10, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/14760584.2018.1471987.  

[17] “Harnessing The Measles Virus To Attack Cancer”, Science Daily, October 31, 2006, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061030143318.htm.

Rønne T, “Measles virus infection without rash in childhood is related to disease in adult life”, Lancet, January 5, 1985, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(85)90961-4.

Annie J. Sasco and Ralph S. Paffenbarger, Jr., “Measles Infection and Parkinson’s Disease”, American Journal of Epidemiology, December 1, 1985, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a114183.

Stefano Parodi, et al., “Childhood infectious diseases and risk of leukaemia in an adult population”, International Journal of Cancer, October 15, 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23575988.

S. O. Shaheen et al., “Measles and atopy in Guinea-Bissau”, Lancet, June 29, 1996, https://doi.org/10.5555/uri:pii:S0140673696916177.

Helen Rosenlund et al., “Allergic Disease and Atopic Sensitization in Children in Relation to Measles Vaccination and Measles Infection”, Pediatrics, March 2009, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2008-0013.

Maurizio Montella et al., “Do childhood diseases affect NHL and HL risk? A case-control study from northern and southern Italy”, Leukemia Research, August 2006, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leukres.2005.11.020.

Yasuhiko Kubota, Hiroyasu Iso, and Akiko Tamakoshi, “Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) study”, Atherosclerosis, August 2015, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2015.06.026.

[18] F D Groves et al., “Haemophilus influenzae type b serology in childhood leukaemia: A case–control study,” British Journal of Cancer, July 31, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.2001.1903.

[19] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Meeting of the Board of Scientific Counselors, Office of Infectious Diseases”, December 11-12, 2013, https://www.cdc.gov/maso/facm/pdfs/BSCOID/2013121112_BSCOID_Minutes.pdf.

Stacey W. Martin et al., “Pertactin-Negative Bordetella pertussis Strains: Evidence for a Possible Selective Advantage”, Clinical Infectious Diseases, January 15, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciu788.

Lucy Breakwell, et al., “Pertussis Vaccine Effectiveness in the Setting of Pertactin-Deficient Pertussis”, Pediatrics, May 2016, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-3973.

[20] G.S. Goldman and P.G. King, “Review of the United States universal varicella vaccination program: Herpes zoster incidence rates, cost-effectiveness, and vaccine efficacy based primarily on the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project data,” Vaccine, March 25, 2013, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.vaccine.2012.05.050.  

[21] United States Government, 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (Public Law 99-660), November 14, 1986, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220067/.

Supreme Court of the United States, Brueswitz et al. v. Wyeth LLC, FKA Wyeth, Inc., et al., February 22, 2011, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf.  

[22] CNN, House Call With Dr. Sanjay Gupta, March 29, 2008, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/29/hcsg.01.html.

David Kirby, “The Vaccine-Autism Court Document Every American Should Read”, Huffington Post, February 26, 2008. In the case of Hannah Poling, the government conceded that multiple vaccinations simultaneously administered “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.”

[23] Sharyl Attkisson, “CDC: ‘Possibility’ that vaccines rarely trigger autism”, December 10, 2018, SharylAttkisson.com, https://sharylattkisson.com/2018/12/10/cdc-possibility-that-vaccines-rarely-trigger-autism/.

COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Are Not About Public Health

The right to informed consent is one of the most fundamental ethics in medicine and a human right that is protected under international law.

International treaties that recognize this right include the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights of 2005, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol of 2006. The right to informed consent is also recognized under international agreements including the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects of 2002 and the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki of 1964, revised in 2013.[1]

Any use of government power to coerce individuals into accepting a risk-carrying pharmaceutical product is a gross violation of the right to informed consent. The decision whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine is a personal one for which there must be an individualized risk-benefit analysis. Science tells us that the risks both from the disease and from the vaccine vary greatly between individuals. Unique knowledge of the individual is required for there to be a meaningful risk-benefit analysis. Any policy that rejects the need for individualized decision-making is inherently unscientific.

Laws and regulations that seek to implement vaccine mandates, vaccine “passport” systems, or other coercive measures inherently violate individuals’ right to make their own informed choices. When the primary reason that a person gets vaccinated is that they would otherwise lose their job, for instance, that individual has not exercised their right to informed consent; instead, they have experienced a violation of this fundamental human right.

Numerous UN member states have implemented coercive measures to achieve the political goal of a high vaccination rate, including the US, where the Executive Branch has sought to implement a regulatory framework in which the task of enforcement is delegated to the private sector. Under this framework, private businesses are made to coerce people on policymakers’ behalf by terminating their employment unless they behave according to the bureaucrats’ wishes.

Under such a framework, both the policymakers and business owners are effectively engaged in the unlicensed practice of medicine without having any of the knowledge of the individual required to conduct a meaningful risk-benefit analysis.

There is a false assumption among policymakers that there are no legitimate reasons for any eligible person to not get vaccinated, and therefore that anyone who is “hesitant” about doing so must have fallen prey to misinformation. However, the term “misinformation” has been politically weaponized to euphemistically mean any information, no matter how factual, that does not align with the policy goal of achieving high vaccine uptake. In fact, government health authorities are frequently among the leading propagators of vaccine misinformation. This is saliently illustrated by the treatment of natural immunity by public health authorities.

In November 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) went so far as to change its definition of “herd immunity” to absurdly exclude the possibility of immunity induced from infection. After a public outcry, the definition was changed once more to again acknowledge the existence of natural immunity.[2]

Similarly, the US government has consistently downplayed the significance of natural immunity. When COVID-19 vaccines first received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in furtherance of the political agenda, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) falsely claimed that the scientific evidence “suggests natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long”.[3]

In fact, studies at the time had already shown that nearly all patients who recover from COVID-19 had robust and durable immunity that not only protected against subsequent disease but was also highly effective for preventing reinfection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

While it is normal for the level of circulating antibodies to rapidly wane from peak levels following an acute infection, scientists observed a decrease in the rate of decay over time. After several months, antibody levels plateaued, and a detectable level of neutralizing antibodies persisted in the vast majority of recovered individuals. Antibodies were even observed to increase after a few months, indicating that antibody production was shifting from short-lived plasmablasts to long-lived bone marrow plasma cells, which are a marker of long-term immunity. Even if individuals do lose a detectable level of antibodies in their blood, immunologic memory persists, and immune cells are capable of rapidly ramping up production of high-affinity antibodies in the event of virus reexposure.[4]

Subsequent research confirmed that infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells and continual adaptation of the antibody response. This indicates that people with natural immunity will likely be able to rapidly mount an effective antibody response for decades if not a lifetime.[5]

In addition to persistence of neutralizing antibodies and immunologic memory, it was known at the time that infection induces a broad range of cellular immune responses that are equally if not more important for limiting infection and moderating the severity of COVID-19.[6]

By January 2021, the CDC’s webpage no longer contained that false statement. However, instead of acknowledging that the scientific evidence indicated that natural immunity was robust, broad, and durable, the CDC deceptively changed its webpage to continue implying that the evidence suggested that natural immunity might be short-lived. People who have recovered from infection, the CDC asserted, “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.”[7]

That argument was a logical fallacy. It did not follow from the fact that scientists did not yet know the duration of natural immunity that therefore natural immunity offered insufficient protection against the disease or that the risk-benefit analysis was the same for recovered individuals as for those who were immunologically naïve. It was also a deceptive argument because the CDC was continuing to withhold from the public the fact that studies had found that infection induces immunological memory likely to offer long-term protection.

In August 2021, the CDC went even further by falsely claiming that the evidence suggested “that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19.”[8] That disinformation, too, was eventually removed the page, but the CDC continues to push the political agenda by claiming that natural immunity offers only “some” protection against COVID-19.[9]

The CDC has thus tried to conceal from the public the fact that studies have confirmed that natural immunity is strong and superior to the immunity induced by COVID-19 vaccines.[10]

A study by Israeli researchers, for example, found that fully vaccinated individuals had a thirteen-fold greater risk of infection with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 than individuals who’d recovered from a prior infection. The study also found no significant additional benefit of vaccinating individuals with pre-existing natural immunity.[11]

Studies have continued to find natural immunity to be robust, broad, and durable.[12] By contrast, studies have consistently found that the protection offered by COVID-19 vaccines wanes rapidly, which has prompted public health officials in many countries to recommend “booster” doses of COVID-19 vaccines.[13]

[Note: Since I drafted this document, the CDC has finally admitted that people with natural immunity were better protected against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 than fully vaccinated people. — JRH]

Natural immunity continues to hold up better also with the Omicron variant, which has numerous mutations in the spike protein that enable it to partially escape circulating antibodies induced by prior infection or vaccination. Researchers in South Africa estimated prior infection to be 75% effective against reinfection with the Omicron variant.[14] Researchers in Qatar published a lower estimate of 56% effectiveness against symptomatic infection and 88% effectiveness against hospitalization or death due to infection with Omicron.[15]

By contrast, researchers in Denmark estimated two doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to have no significant effectiveness against infection with Omicron after just one month and negative effectiveness after three months.[16] Researchers in Canada similarly found no significant effectiveness of two doses and negative effectiveness after four months.[17] Data from the UK government likewise show negative vaccine effectiveness within six months of receipt of the second dose. A “booster” dose results in an increase in an effectiveness, but as with the primary regimen, this protection appears to wane rapidly.[18] The head of the Biological Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy division of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has warned that frequently repeated vaccinations “would not represent a sustainable long-term strategy” and could have detrimental effects on individuals’ immunity.[19]

Transparently, when government officials attempt to use their power to deceive or coerce even those who already have effective immunity into compliance with the mass vaccination agenda, the policies are not about bettering public health but about exercising power and control as well as generating profits for the pharmaceutical industry.[20] In this regard, it is notable that the US government has claimed joint ownership of Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which was codeveloped by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the directorship of Dr. Anthony Fauci.[21]

Members of the United Nations are reminded of their ethical and legal obligations to respect and protect the right to informed consent, which requires truthful communication about the science and absence of policies aiming to coerce people into acceptance of risk-carrying pharmaceutical products.

References

[1] United Nations General Assembly, A/HCR/45/NGO/43, September 14, 2020, https://undocs.org/A/HRC/45/NGO/43.

[2] World Health Organization, “Coronavirus disease (COVID‑19): Serology”, WHO.int, updated June 9, 2020, archived November 12, 2020, at https://web.archive.org/web/20201112033233/https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-serology.

WHO, “Coronavirus disease,” WHO.int, updated November 13, 2020, archived November 14, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201114155111/https:/www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-serology.

WHO, “Coronavirus disease,” WHO.int, updated December 31, 2020, archived July 1, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210701225223/https:/www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-serology.

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 Vaccination,” CDC.gov, updated December 20, 2020, archived December 29, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201229024002/https:/www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html.

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