Introduction

Months before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first issued “emergency use authorization” (EUA) for COVID‑19 vaccines, I was already warning about the risk of a detrimental immunologic phenomenon known as “original antigenic sin”. I authored General Assembly document A/HRC/45/NGO/43, for example, which was published on September 14, 2020 (three months before the first EUA), in which I explicitly warned of this potential risk of any future COVID‑19 vaccine.

As I summarized therein, “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.”

I warned of the potential for COVID‑19 vaccines to similarly cause this problem. As I had been repeatedly pointing out in my writings and interviews, mass vaccination with these experimental products (EUA status is specifically for FDA unapproved products still considered investigational) could have the opposite of the intended effect, resulting in a prolonging of the pandemic and worsening of long-term outcomes due to the opportunity cost of superior natural immunity.

Naturally, the mainstream media have been almost totally silent about the risk of these pharmaceutical products causing people’s immune systems to become fixated on a suboptimal immune response relative to the immune response induced by infection.

The first and only mention of original antigenic sin that I saw in the New York Times was an article on January 6, 2022, which failed to properly explain this phenomenon much less to communicate its true significance in the context of the global mass vaccination campaign that had been underway for over a year.

The way the Times described it, “original antigenic sin” refers simply to a mismatch between the antigen component of the vaccine and circulating variants of the virus. That is wrong because there can be a mismatch without the occurrence of original antigenic sin. The Times failed to explain that original antigenic sin is when the immune system fails to adapt its responses to be more specific to the newly infecting variant.

The Times also failed to explain to its readers that the immunity acquired by infection is superior to that induced by COVID‑19 vaccines. As I explained in my June 22 article “‘Original Antigenic Sin’ Is a Real Problem with COVID‑19 Vaccines”, studies have shown that natural immunity is robust, broad, durable, and adaptive. The immune system learns to update its responses in the event of reinfection to be more specific to the newly infecting variant. As I also documented in that article, this is not the case for immune systems instead primed by COVID‑19 vaccines.

Instead, the immune systems of vaccinated people remain fixated on generating antibodies specific to the spike protein of the original Wuhan strain of SARS‑CoV‑2, which is now extinct outside of laboratories, with limited cross-reactivity to the spike protein of presently circulating variants.

I further explained how attempts to modify COVID‑19 vaccines to induce immune responses more specific to circulating variants had failed because of original antigenic sin. This failure has been acknowledged by Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), which has made recommendations for the FDA to authorize or approve COVID‑19 vaccines for various populations.

The FDA therefore knows about this problem, yet it has proceeded to authorize COVID‑19 vaccines containing Omicron components anyway, without any safety or efficacy data from human clinical trials. This new “Omicron” booster is being sold to the public on the explicit or implicit grounds that it will broaden the immune response to be more specific to the circulating Omicron subvariants, which is a scientifically fraudulent claim.

We have been presented with zero data to support that marketing message, and we can anticipate from data already available in the scientific literature that what these booster shots will do is merely increase antibodies specific to the original Wuhan strain with limited cross-reactivity to the Omicron spike protein, as opposed to adapting vaccinated people’s immune responses to become broader and more specific to the Omicron subvariants.

Apart from the Times’ misinformative acknowledgment of original antigenic sin, the media have remained silent about this demonstrated problem with COVID‑19 vaccines. Another rare exception was published last week by ABC News. The article, published on September 7, is titled “What you need to know about ‘original antigenic sin’ with fall COVID boosters around the corner”. The subtitle says, “Experts are split on the role this will play in the fight against COVID.”

Naturally, though, the article utterly fails to inform members of the public what they need to know about it. Instead, the message delivered by ABC News is completely ridiculous.

Misreporting the Whole Essence of Original Antigenic Sin

Here are the introductory paragraphs from the article, which are illuminating inasmuch as they show how propaganda works:

With new COVID variant-specific booster shots set to roll out in the coming week, vaccine scientists argue that more research is needed to understand how a person’s early immune response—either through vaccination or infection itself—may impact future protection against a constantly evolving virus.

The body learns its best defensive moves during its first encounter with a virus, according to experts. However, once a virus evolves, the immune system is slower to respond.

That is a phenomenon called “original antigenic sin,” or “immune imprinting.”

Scientists say that despite nearly three years of living amid pandemic there are unanswered questions. For example: What’s the best way to maximize protection through vaccination? What vaccine formula would deliver the broadest immune coverage? How often should people receive booster shots?

This is not just uninformative; it is utterly misinformative.

First, the way ABC News describes the phenomenon using the simple present verb tense, it is just a normal occurrence with every pathogenic virus. It is always true, by this account, that “the immune system is slower to respond” to later variants than the “best defensive moves” it acquires “during its first encounter with a virus”.

But that is false. As already mentioned, a variant may escape the acquired immunity from a prior infection without the occurrence of original antigenic sin due to the immune system’s ability to adapt its responses to be more specific to the newly infecting variant.

Second, it is also completely untrue that “original antigenic sin” is a problem with the speed of the immune response. It is not about the speed of the response but the specificity.

Apart from that, it is also false that the immune system takes longer to respond to a newly infecting variant than it does upon an initial infection. The opposite is true. With SARS‑CoV‑2, studies have shown that infection induces long-term immunologic memory so that even if circulating antibody levels wane over time to undetectable levels, the immune system can rapidly churn out more antibodies as needed in the event of reexposure to the virus. The immune system doesn’t have to learn all over again from scratch how to generate effective responses. The secondary immune response is faster, not slower. This is elementary, but ABC News somehow managed to get even that basic principle of immunology wrong.

Original antigenic sin has nothing to do with a secondary response being “slower”. It refers instead to a situation in which the trained immunity remains fixated on producing responses specific to the originally infecting strain rather than adapting to be more specific to the newly infecting variant. Thus, ABC News gets the whole essence of original antigenic sin completely wrong.

This is a clear illustration of how the authors of the ABC News article do not understand original antigenic sin and therefore are in no position to explain to the rest of us what it means, much less its significance in the context of mass COVID‑19 vaccination.

Third, this account by ABC News makes it sound as though original antigenic sin is a problem with natural immunity that can potentially be fixed by vaccination. As illustrated by the “unanswered questions” ABC News presents, it is a foregone conclusion that COVID‑19 vaccines are the solution to the problem. It is a foregone conclusion that maximal protection is derived from vaccination and that the only question is not whether but how frequently people should receive COVID‑19 booster shots.

Never mind that studies have already demonstrated the superior adaptability of natural immunity in contrast to the immunologic fixation among vaccinated people on the spike protein of the original Wuhan strain. ABC News predictably fails to raise the following critical question about these new booster shots: Will the boosters help adapt the immune systems of vaccinated people to become more specific to Omicron subvariants, or will it merely increase antibodies specific to the ancestral strain with limited cross-reactivity?

That is a question that “public health” agencies like the FDA and CDC are refusing to provide the answer to, which is an unsurprising omission given the answer that we can already anticipate based on the existing literature. If mechanistic studies into the immune responses to vaccination and prior efforts to adapt mRNA vaccines to target SARS‑CoV‑2 variants are any indication, the immune response to these booster shots will still be characterized by specificity to the ancestral strain rather than Omicron.

It is possible that the boosters will induce antibodies characterized by somewhat more specificity to Omicron, but even if that proves true, they will not simply erase the immune fixation resulting from prior vaccination. It is not as though these boosters can undo the detrimental effect of prior vaccination relative to the superior adaptability of the broader immune responses resulting from infection. Since the new bivalent boosters also still also contain the original mRNA component designed to elicit immune responses to the spike protein of the original Wuhan strain, they could even exacerbate the effect of original antigenic sin.

After having implied that it is always true that the immune system responds “slower” upon reexposure to a virus and having falsely claimed that the term “original antigenic sin” refers to this supposedly slow response, further down the page, ABC News quotes John Brownstein, “an ABC News contributor and chief innovation office at Boston Children’s Hospital”, contradictorily describing original antigenic sin as being just “a theory” that “the first exposure to a virus may sort of imprint your immune system”.

That is much closer to the mark, but still incorrect. It is not just a theory. It is an observable immunologic phenomenon that scientists have known about since the 1960s.

ABC News also fails to clarify that natural immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2, specifically, is adaptive, whereas original antigenic sin is characteristic of vaccine-primed immune systems.

Failing to Explain the True Significance of Original Antigenic Sin

We then come to a subheading importantly asking, “What does this all mean in terms of COVID vaccines and boosters?” Unsurprisingly, ABC News fails to provide the right answer to that question, leaving the public completely in the dark about the true significance.

“Some experts say they are concerned”, the article explains, “that frequent boosting with the original version of the vaccine may have inadvertently exacerbated immune imprinting.”

And that is correct. Repeated immune stimulation with the same antigen exacerbates the problem of original antigenic sin. However, in the very next paragraph, ABC News again falsely claims that this problem with COVID‑19 boosters is “still theoretical”. No! It is not. As I documented in my prior article about this being a real problem, numerous studies have confirmed that this phenomenon occurs with COVID‑19 vaccines.

ABC News quotes Dr. Paul Offit explaining how repeated booster doses in the context of original antigenic sin will make it “harder” for their immune systems to respond to a different strain of the virus. Offit is named as a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. ABC News failed to disclose the highly relevant information that Offit is actually a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee who has been critical of the FDA’s decision to push these Omicron-based booster shots in the absence of supporting data from human clinical trials.

Without disclosing Offit’s position on the FDA’s committee and the special knowledge of the situation derived from being a part of the review and decision-making process within the FDA, ABC News proceeds to cast doubt on Offit’s suggestion that original antigenic sin might be a real problem for COVID‑19 booster shots by reporting, “Other scientists disagree, arguing that the immune system is adaptable and dynamic. Boosters, they argue, will not freeze the immune system in place.”

This alternative view again conflates natural immunity with vaccine-induced immunity, and it also demonstrates complete ignorance on the part of those expressing that view of the existing scientific literature. Pitting the informed critical opinion of an industry insider whose bias is in favor of vaccines (Offit is himself also a codeveloper of Merck’s rotavirus vaccine) with opposing views from demonstrably clueless “experts” is not objective journalism. Characterizing the issue as a matter of opposing opinions is not objectivity when the one view is candidly grounded in reality while the opposing view is witlessly premised on willful ignorance of the scientific literature.

Yes, it is generally true that the immune system is adaptable and dynamic, yet it is also true that original antigenic sin is an observable phenomenon with some pathogens. Yes, it is generally true that natural immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2 is adaptable and dynamic. No, the available evidence does not lead us to the conclusion that original antigenic sin will not be a problem with these booster shots. The evidence leads us to the opposite conclusion, as rightly indicated by Paul Offit.

Continuing, ABC News informs, “Meanwhile, updated boosters are slated to roll out this week. These boosters are specifically designed against new omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.”

To clarify, what ABC News means is that the new boosters include mRNA intended to cause the cells to produce spike proteins of these subvariants in addition to spike proteins of the ancestral Wuhan strain (hence it being called a “bivalent” vaccine). While the hope is that these products will induce immune responses specific to these Omicron subvariants, there is an absence of data proving this to be the case.

The article then quotes Dr. Ann Durbin, the director of the center for immunization research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sharing her opinion that, “When we have an omicron-specific booster, it doesn’t make sense not to use that.” Durbin goes on to express her uninformed opinion that original antigenic sin is not an issue with COVID‑19 vaccines.

Thus, Dr. Durbin simply begs the question. She demonstrates willful ignorance of the published scientific research demonstrating that original antigenic sin is a problem. Had she acted responsibly, she would have honestly told ABC News that she hadn’t researched that particular topic and so couldn’t comment. Given the reality of which Durbin is so blissfully unaware, what doesn’t make sense is to roll out this new booster vaccine and sell it to the public with the promise that it will adapt people’s immune response to be specific to the predominant Omicron subvariants and that this will translate into strong protection.

The article goes on to say that being fully vaccinated plus boosted has “continued to reduce the risk of severe illness from COVID‑19.” The puzzling message conveyed is thus that it doesn’t really matter whether original antigenic sin is real or not because the vaccines work.

ABC News fails to explain that vaccine effectiveness against infection is very short lived and that numerous studies have reported the finding that after several months of waning, vaccine effectiveness becomes negative, meaning that vaccinated people are at higher risk of infection with SARS‑CoV‑2. Original antigenic sin and the opportunity cost of superior natural immunity can help to explain these observations. Nor does ABC News inform that the protection against severe disease, although more durable than the “sterilizing” immunity that prevents infection and transmission, also wanes quite rapidly.

According to data recently published by the UK Health Security Agency, COVID‑19 vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection with the Omicron variant falls from a maximum of 70 percent down to around 15 percent within six months since receipt of the second dose. After a booster dose, effectiveness among adults aged 18 to 64 years falls from a maximum of 75 percent to “almost no effect” within five months. Vaccine effectiveness of a booster shot against hospitalization falls from a peak of 82 percent to 54 percent within three-and-a-half months. Among people aged 50 years and older, booster effectiveness against death from COVID‑19 falls from 94 percent to 88 percent at ten weeks.

Data from a study recently reported in the New England Journal of Medicine show that, among five-to-eleven-year-olds, the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 vaccine against infection becomes significantly negative within five months, which accords with similar findings of negative vaccine effectiveness from numerous prior studies (which I also covered in my article reporting scientific confirmation of original antigenic sin).

Even more alarmingly, the data show that vaccination of children who had previously recovered from infection results in their protection against infection being similarly lost and entering negative territory within five months, whereas unvaccinated children with natural immunity had durable protection for the full duration of follow-up, which was 17 months for that particular group.

Thus, the data suggest that vaccination somehow wipes out children’s natural immunity, replacing it with the suboptimal immunity characteristic of children whose immune systems are primed by vaccination rather than by infection. (Curiously, the study authors offered no comment about this finding much less a possible explanation. Instead, they leapt fallaciously to the conclusion that their findings supported full vaccination plus booster shots for all children, including those with pre-existing natural immunity.)

The study further showed that natural immunity is considerably more protective against COVID‑19 hospitalization in terms of both scale and duration. Whereas vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization fell below 80 percent within four months, natural immunity remained over 90 percent effective for more than twice that duration.

Having failed to acknowledge studies confirming original antigenic sin and numerous studies showing rapid waning into negative vaccine effectiveness, ABC News additionally fails to explain that while the data show a protective effect of vaccination against severe COVID‑19, the data do not show an overall mortality benefit of the mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines. This is explainable because while vaccines might offer protection against dying from the target disease, they can simultaneously increase the risk of death from other causes. Such unintended consequences are known as “non-specific effects” of vaccines in the literature.

For illustration, the supplementary data from Pfizer’s clinical trial for participants aged sixteen years through six-months of follow up showed that 0.07 percent of participants in the vaccine group died compared to 0.06 percent of those in the placebo group. While two people died from COVID 19 in the placebo group compared to one in the vaccine group, the most notable disparity is that four people in the vaccine group died of a heart attack compared to one in the placebo group.

While we don’t know that these deaths were caused by the vaccine since the trial wasn’t powered to answer that question, the fact that more people died in the vaccine group (and at a slightly higher rate) is certainly a cause for concern since the whole ostensible purpose of these products is to reduce the risk of dying.

What also isn’t being reported by the mainstream media are the long-term consequences of having repeatedly stimulated the immune system to produce antibodies to the spike protein of the original Wuhan strain and how this results in suboptimal immunity relative to that induced by infection. “Public health” officials perpetually fail to consider superior natural immunity as an opportunity cost of vaccination. This by itself invalidates their ostensible risk-benefit analyses.

The long-term consequence that we can anticipate is that vaccinated people, after receiving a relatively short duration of protection from their vaccine-induced immunity, will become more susceptible to COVID‑19 throughout their lifetimes relative to people with natural immunity.

That is the true significance of original antigenic sin that ABC News, like every other major news outlet, utterly fails to explain to the public.

The “public health” establishment can try to delay that outcome with repeated booster shots, but they also have no data from human trials demonstrating either the safety or efficacy of the new Omicron-based boosters, and they are effectively using the population as subjects of a mass uncontrolled experiment by repeatedly stimulating individuals’ immune systems with booster doses. The long-term consequences of this practice on people’s health remain unknown.

The ABC News article closes by again citing John Brownstein expressing his view, “I don’t see it as causing a problem but it’s an important line of research that needs to be investigated.”

Evidently, Brownstein, like Durbin, is completely ignorant of the scientific literature on this topic. Yes, more research is needed, but enough research has been done to know that natural immunity is robust, broad, and durable, whereas original antigenic sin is a real problem with COVID‑19 vaccines, which have been associated in numerous studies with an increased risk of infection after several months of rapid waning.

The article closes by quoting Brownstein saying, “We don’t fully know whether this concept actually is harmful, or even a benefit for future, potential risks to infection.” Brownstein fails to explain how imprinting vaccinated people’s immune systems to generate suboptimal immune responses could possibly be interpreted as beneficial rather than detrimental.

The ridiculous takeaway message from the ABC News article is thus that, yeah, original antigenic sin could theoretically occur with COVID‑19 vaccines, but it happens normally with any viral infection, too, and is nothing at all to worry about: it’s a foregone conclusion that more vaccination is the answer, that everyone should get the new booster shots, and, hey, if original antigenic sin does happen, it will be good for you.

I must express my objection to this absurdity. No, it is not good for people to have an immune system that fails to adapt its responses to be more specific to a newly infecting variant. What is good is for people is to have an immune system that does adapt. The risk-benefit analysis one conducts for oneself must take into consideration the fact that superior natural immunity is an opportunity cost of vaccination, and one must consider the implications for long-term protection arising from undergoing a pharmaceutical intervention that imprints one’s immune system to respond suboptimally relative to the immunity induced by infection.

Conclusion

In sum, ABC News fails to adequately explain what original antigenic sin is, even ridiculously describing it as a problem with the speed of the immune response as opposed to the specificity, which incorrect explanation is accompanied by the false claim that the immune responses to subsequent exposures occur more slowly than the immune responses to a primary exposure to a virus.

ABC News also fails to explain that this has generally not been observed to be a problem with natural immunity, which is adaptive outside of cases of severe disease characterized by dysfunctional cellular immunity. ABC News furtherfails to explain that numerous studies have confirmed that original antigenic sin is a problem with COVID‑19 vaccines, which helps to explain repeated findings of negative vaccine effectiveness after just a few months of rapid waning. Consequently, ABC News also fails to explain the true significance of this phenomenon, which is that natural immunity must be considered an opportunity cost of vaccination, which has critical implications for long-term protection against COVID‑19.

It is one thing for elderly people at high risk of severe COVID‑19 to consider vaccination as a means to possibly extending their lives. It is quite another for these products to be pushed with criminal recklessness on children despite the complete absence of data from randomized controlled trials comparing long-term health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.

On one hand, it is good to see a major media outlet issuing a rare acknowledgment of the risk of original antigenic sin. Unfortunately, much like the New York Times’ acknowledgment back in January, ABC News utterly fails to communicate its true significance of this phenomenon to the public. The news outlet is evidently more concerned with conducting damage control on behalf of “public health” officials and the pharmaceutical companies than in conducting journalism. Consequently, the article contributes to the systemic problem of not merely uninformed but misinformed consent for repeated doses of COVID‑19 vaccines.