‘Original Antigenic Sin’ Was a Foreseeable Risk of COVID-19 Vaccines

My longtime readers know that even before the mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines first received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), I was warning about the risk of an immunological phenomenon known as “original antigenic sin”, also sometimes called “immune imprinting”.

This is a detrimental effect wherein the immune system becomes fixated on generating a suboptimal immune response.

One of my warnings was included in a document I authored that was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council and published on September 14, 2020, as UN General Assembly document A/HCR/45/NGO/43, titled “Vaccine Mandates Violate the Right to Informed Consent”.

The failure of “public health” officials and providers to inform people about this risk is another manifestation of how the right to informed consent has been systematically violated with the administration of COVID‑19 vaccines.

Throughout the mass vaccination campaign that began once the vaccines were authorized in December 2020, I was warning that this could be a problem. In early September 2021, I published the first of a series of articles about how, contrary to claims being made by the “public health” establishment, the preponderance of scientific evidence overwhelmingly showed that natural immunity was far superior to that conferred by COVID‑19 vaccines. In it, I again warned about the risk of original antigenic sin, which I explained as follows:

In immunology, there are phenomena known as “original antigenic sin” and “linked-epitope suppression”. 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.

By the fall of 2021, evidence started to emerge that original antigenic sin might be occurring with vaccinated people. One early indication was the finding that vaccinated people appeared to have an impaired ability to generate antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS‑CoV‑2, suggesting a fixation of the immune system’s responses on the spike protein relative to people who instead acquired immunity as a result of infection.

It wasn’t until January 2022 that America’s “newspaper of record”, the New York Times finally acknowledged that original antigenic sin was a risk of vaccination, but the Times terribly mischaracterized the phenomenon so as to trivialize its significance.

Around the same time, studies were emerging that showed that after several months of waning immunity, vaccine effectiveness became negative. By June 2022, this body of literature also included several studies showing negative effectiveness specifically in children.

Additionally, by mid-summer, numerous studies had confirmed that original antigenic sin was a real problem with mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines.

Nevertheless, when the FDA expanded its emergency use authorization to include vaccination of children under the age of five and infants as young as six months old, it completely ignored all this scientific evidence for a detrimental effect on people’s immune systems.

As I showed in my freely available e-book The FDA, COVID‑19 Vaccines, and Scientific Fraud, this was not because the FDA was unaware of this risk. In fact, Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, authored an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine acknowledging that it was a problem.

The evidence for original antigenic sin and negative vaccine effectiveness, including in children, continued to accumulate throughout the rest of 2022, including from studies looking at the effects of the bivalent COVID‑19 booster shots.

When the FDA first authorized the bivalent vaccines for emergency use, it falsely advertised that they would “update” people’s antibodies to be specific to the spike protein of Omicron subvariants. Instead, studies showed that people’s immune systems remained fixated on generating antibodies to the spike protein of the original Wuhan strain of SARS‑CoV‑2, which helps to explain the finding of a study funded by COVID‑19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna that vaccine effectiveness became negative within five months of a booster dose.

A study earlier this year by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, found that the more booster shots people had, the higher their risk of getting COVID‑19—another unsurprising outcome given the known problem of original antigenic sin.

The “public health” establishment continues to ignore this problem and the need to consider natural immunity an opportunity cost of vaccination. That is, by getting vaccinated, people are foregoing the opportunity to acquire the superior protection afforded by natural immunity.

This is just another example of the complete lack of trustworthiness of the “public health” establishment.

Appendix: A Timeline of My Warnings and Reporting about Original Antigenic Sin

I recently reviewed the content I’ve published on my website addressing the issue of original antigenic sin with COVID‑19 vaccines, so while I was at it, I complied the following timeline:

• September 14, 2020 — UN General Assembly document A/HCR/45/NGO/43 is published, a document I authored titled “Vaccine Mandates Violate the Right to Informed Consent”, in which I warned about the risk of original antigenic sin in the context of increasing calls by prominent figures to make the COVID‑19 vaccines then under development mandatory once they were rolled out.
• March 10, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I criticized “public health” officials for refusing to consider the opportunity costs from vaccination: specifically, the lost opportunity to acquire the superior immunity conferred by infection and the risk that the vaccines could cause an immunological phenomenon known in the literature as “original antigenic sin” or “immune imprinting”.
• April 20, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I again warned about the opportunity cost of vaccination and risk of original antigenic sin to which “public health” officials were completely blinding themselves.
• May 3, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I again warned about the possibility of original antigenic sin and the need to consider the opportunity cost of vaccination.
• May 13, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I once again explained to my host’s audience the risk of original antigenic sin with COVID‑19 vaccines.
• May 18, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I warned again about original antigenic sin.
• September 2, 2021 — In the first of a series of articles I wrote about the superiority of natural immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2, I explained what original antigenic sin is and why natural immunity must be considered an opportunity cost of vaccination.
• September 8, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I warned again about original antigenic sin.
• September 11, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I issued yet another warning to the public about the potential risk of this detrimental effect of COVID‑19 vaccines.
• September 14, 2021 — I published “The Origins of the Lie That Natural Immunity to SARS‑CoV‑2 Wanes Rapidly”, the third part of my series on natural immunity, in which I remined that, “if the phenomenon of “original antigenic sin” occurs with COVID‑19 vaccines, then attainment of the superior immunity conferred by infection must be seen as an opportunity cost of vaccination, and mass vaccination would impede rather than contribute to the development of the population immunity required to minimize deaths in the long run.”
• September 22, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I again explained why original antigenic sin was a concern for COVID‑19 vaccines that urgently warranted research, but how the scientific community along with the “public health” establishment had turned a blind eye to the risk.
• October 12, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I explained original antigenic sin and why everyone needed to be aware of the potential for this occurring with COVID‑19 vaccines before deciding whether to get vaccinated.
• October 18, 2021 — I posted an interview in which I explained again how the right to informed consent was being systematically violated because people were not being told about the risk of original antigenic sin.
• November 18, 2021 — I posted an interview again warning about original antigenic sin; by this time “public health” officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci were walking back their original promise that two doses of an mRNA COVID‑19 vaccine would confer durable sterilizing immunity by now telling people that they’d need a “booster” shot to sustain protection against severe disease.
• November 29, 2021 — I published “Fact Checking the ‘Fact Checkers’ on Natural Immunity to SARS-CoV-2”, in which I cited data from the UK indicating that vaccinated individuals experiencing “breakthrough” infection had an impaired ability to develop antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein”, which, I explained, was suggestive of original antigenic sin and a fixation of the immune response on the spike protein.
• January 10, 2022 — I published “NY Times Finally Acknowledges ‘Original Antigenic Sin’”, in which I reported what was the very first acknowledgment I had yet seen from a mainstream media outlet acknowledging that potential risk of this occurring as a result of COVID‑19 vaccination. (Although, the New York Times terribly mischaracterized the phenomenon in a way that trivialized its significance, so I corrected the newspaper’s misinformation.)  
• January 14, 2022 — I published “The Real Reason Why Omicron Is a ‘Variant of Concern’, in which I observed that if original antigenic sin were occurring, we would expect to see vaccine effectiveness eventually become negative. In addition to the UK data indicating impaired ability to generate antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, I cited three studies finding negative vaccine effectiveness after several months of waning.
• January 21, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I again explained about the risk of original antigenic sin with COVID‑19 vaccines.
• February 21, 2022 — I published “A Chronicle of Statements about Natural Immunity Once Deemed Misinformation But Now Admittedly True”, which included numerous instances in which I’d warned about the risk of original antigenic sin with COVID‑19 vaccines.
• February 25, 2022 — I published “Why COVID‑19 Vaccines Cannot Stop the Evolution of SARS‑CoV‑2 variants”, in which I debunked the propaganda claim alluded to in my headline and explained the relevance of original antigenic sin to virus evolution, i.e., how vaccinated people would come drive the emergence of new variants.
• March 4, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I repeated my warning about the risk of original antigenic sin.
• June 10, 2022 — I published “Evidence for Negative COVID‑19 Vaccine Effectiveness in Children”, in which I once again reviewed the evidence for original antigenic sin and cited studies showing negative vaccine effectiveness specifically in children.
• June 22, 2022 — I published “‘Original Antigenic Sin’ Is a Real Problem with COVID‑19 Vaccines”, in which I reviewed a number of studies that had confirmed that this problem does occur with mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines.
• July 25, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I explained how the FDA’s emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s COVID‑19 vaccine for infants and toddlers was based on brazen scientific fraud, and in that context I explained how the FDA was completely ignoring evidence of negative vaccine effectiveness and the confirmation of original antigenic sin.  
• August 5, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I again explained about original antigenic sin and why we must consider natural immunity an opportunity cost of vaccination.
• August 9, 2022 — I published my free e-book The FDA, COVID‑19 Vaccines, and Scientific Fraud: How the US Government Puts Children’s Health at Risk in Service to the Pharmaceutical Industry. In it, I reviewed several studies finding negative vaccine effectiveness after several months of waning, numerous other studies providing lab evidence of immune imprinting, and an article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, in which he acknowledged that vaccinated people “are at risk for the theoretical problem of an ‘original antigenic sin’”.
• August 18, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I review the scientific fraud underlying the FDA’s emergency use authorization of mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines for infants and toddlers, once again pointing out how the FDA was completely ignoring the studies confirming original antigenic sin.
• September 13, 2022 — I posted an interview in which I explained how studies had confirmed that original antigenic sin is a real problem with COVID‑19 vaccines.
• September 19, 2022 — I published “The Alarming Consequences of COVID‑19 Vaccines for Children”, which I reviewed the accumulating evidence for negative vaccine effectiveness and original antigenic sin.
• September 20, 2022 — I published “ABC News Gets ‘Original Antigenic Sin’ Completely Wrong”, about an ABC piece that acknowledged this phenomenon but, like the New York Times before it, completely misinformed its audience about its significance.
• October 31, 2022 — I published “Omicron Booster Shots and Original Antigenic Sin”, in which I reviewed the past evidence plus a new study showing the resulting failure of the bivalent booster shots to live up to the FDA’s advertised promises of “updating” antibodies to be specific to Omicron variants.
• November 2, 2022 — I published “Yet Another Study Showing Negative COVID‑19 Vaccine Effectiveness”, in which I again summarized the accumulating evidence of original antigenic sin.
• November 7, 2022 — I published “Moderna Study Shows Negative Vaccine Effectiveness within 5 Months after a Booster Shot”, in which I again explained that this is the expected outcome given the problem of original antigenic sin.
• November 17, 2022 — I published “COVID-19 Vaccinated People Equally Contagious as Unvaccinated Within 10 Weeks”, in which I mentioned again how studies had confirmed that original antigenic sin is a real problem with these products.
• November 19, 2022 — I published “Another Omicron Booster Shot Study Reveals Original Antigenic Sin”, once again reviewing the accumulating proof that this problem was real.
• January 18, 2023 — I published “How the Media Conceal the Detrimental Effects of COVID-19 Vaccines on the Immune System”, in which I explained how the right to informed consent was being systematically violated, including as a result of the failure of the “public health” establishment and the media to inform people about the reality of original antigenic sin.
• June 23, 2023 — I published “More COVID‑19 Doses Results in Higher Risk of COVID‑19”, in which I reviewed a study indicating that boosters had a detrimental effect on people’s immunity, with people having a higher risk of COVID‑19 the more booster does they’d received; and I explained why this result makes perfect sense in light of original antigenic sin, along with another probable detrimental effect of vaccination known as antibody class switching.
• July 4, 2023 — I posted an interview in which I explained how I was able to accurately forewarn that original antigenic sin might be a problem with the mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines.
• July 12, 2023 — I published “Why You Should Stop Trusting ‘The Experts’”, in which I cited the example of how the public had been lied to, including with respect to the opportunity cost of natural immunity in light of the detrimental fixation of vaccinated individuals’ immune systems on generating a suboptimal immune response to circulating SARS‑CoV‑2 variants.
• July 29, 2023 — I published “New York Times Slams DeSantis for Florida Faring Little Better than Lockdown States with COVID-19 Mortality”, in which I included a section reviewing how the FDA had made scientifically fraudulent claims about the effectiveness of the bivalent COVID‑19 booster shots.
• August 11, 2023 — I published “Why Are So Many Americans Incapable of Thinking Rationally?”, in which reminded how the FDA had falsely advertised the booster shots, thus relieving the vaccine manufacturers of the legal liability they could incur were they to make such scientifically fraudulent claims themselves instead of having the FDA do it for them.