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Why Is There Such Reluctance to Discuss Natural Immunity?

woman on beech embracing sunlight

Opinion | If you’re among those of us who aren’t tribally invested in COVID politics but would like good information about when life will resume as normal, chances are you’re interested in herd immunity. You’re likely not interested in having to rely on the Internet Archive for good information on herd immunity. Alas, it’s become a go-to place for retrieving, as it were, previously published information on herd immunity that became inconvenient post-vaccine and then virtually Memory-Holed.

Over the past 15 months, the litany of Experts’ True Facts and Science regarding various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 has changed more often than the starting lineup of a bad minor league ball club. COVID-19 is spread by droplets, especially from asymptomatic people, until one day it was airborne all along and people who weren’t sick in all likelihood weren’t even sick. Stay at home, you’re safer indoors, even stay away from parks and beaches; well, actually, outdoors is the place to be. Masks don’t work against viruses and are actually unhealthy to wear if you’re not sick, then suddenly they did work and without one you might as well be shooting people. Everyone knows and PolitiFact verified that the virus couldn’t have been created in the prominent infectious disease lab doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in bats coincidentally at COVID Ground Zero until, one day, PolitiFact had to retract the entire “Pants on Fire!” article. And so forth.

Unfortunately, information about herd immunity has also not been immune to this kind of meddling. Until recent months, people readily understood that active immunity came about either by natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. Natural immunity comes from battling and defeating an actual infection, then having your immune system primed for the rest of your life to fight it off if it ever shows up again. This immunity is achieved at a sometimes very high personal price.

Vaccine-induced immunity is to prime your immune system with a weaker, non-threatening form of the invading infection, so that it’s ready to fight off the real thing should you ever encounter it, and without your having first to risk severe illness or death.

Those interested in herd immunity in itself likely don’t have a moral or political preference for one form of immunity to the exclusion of the other. Immunity is immunity, regardless of whether a particular person has it naturally or by a vaccine. All immunity contributes to herd immunity.

Others, however, are much less circumspect. They seem to have forgotten the ultimate goal of the public campaign for people to receive vaccination against COVID-19. It’s not to be vaccinated; it’s to have immunity. People with natural immunity—i.e., people whose immune systems have faced COVID-19 and won — don’t need a vaccine.

They do, however, need to be considered in any good-faith discussion of herd immunity. There are two prongs to herd immunity, as we used to all know, and those with natural immunity are the prong that’s being ignored. It’s not just mere oversight, however. Fostering such ignorance can lead to several bad outcomes:

  • People with natural immunity could be kept from employment, education, travel, normal commerce, and who knows what other things if they don’t submit to a vaccine they don’t need in order to fulfill a head count that confuses a means with the end
  • The nation could already be at herd immunity while governors and health bureaucrats continue to exert extreme emergency powers, harming people’s liberties and livelihoods
  • People already terrified of COVID—including especially those who’ve already had it—would continue to live in fear, avoiding human interaction and worrying beyond all reason
  • People could come to distrust even sound advice from experts about important matters, as they witness and grow to expect how what “the experts” counsel diverges from what they know to be wise counsel while it conforms to and amplifies the temporary needs of the political class

Those of us wanting good information certainly don’t want any of those outcomes. But others seem perfectly fine to risk them. They include not only elected officials, members of the media, political talking heads, self-important bureaucrats, and their wide-eyed acolytes harassing shoppers, but strangely also highly prominent health organizations.

For example, late last year Jeffrey Tucker showed that the World Health Organization (WHO) suddenly, and “for reasons unknown,” changed its definition of “herd immunity.” Using screenshots from a cached version on the Internet Archive, Tucker showed how the WHO altered its definition in such a way as to erase completely the role of natural immunity. Before, the WHO rightly said it “happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” The WHO’s change stated that it happens “if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” Not long after Tucker’s piece appeared, the WHO restored natural immunity to its definition.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seemingly apropos of nothing, on May 19 issued a “safety communication” to warn that FDA-authorized SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests “should not be used to evaluate immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time.” The FDA’s concern appears to be that taking an antibody test too soon after receiving a vaccination may fail to show vaccine-induced antibodies, but why preclude its use for “identifying people with an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 from a recent or prior infection?” Especially after stating outright that “Antibody tests can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response.”

Then there is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, that ubiquitous font of fatuous guidance. He had told people that herd immunity would be at 60 to 70 percent immunity, and then he started publicly cinching those numbers up: 75 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent, even 90 percent (as if COVID-19 were as infectious as measles). He is quoted in the New York Times admitting to doing so deliberately to affect people’s behavior:

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.

Now—or better put, as of this writing—Fauci has taken to arguing herd immunity is a “mystical elusive number,” a distracting “endgame,” and therefore not worth considering. Only vaccinations are worth counting. As he put it recently, “We don’t want to get too hung up on reaching this endgame of herd immunity because every day that you put 2 million to 3 million vaccinations into people [it] makes society be more and more protected.”

While composing an article about natural immunity and herd immunity for my home state of North Carolina, I happened to notice that the Mayo Clinic had removed a compelling factoid about natural immunity. It’s something I had quoted in an earlier discussion of the matter and wanted to revisit it.

Here’s what the Mayo Clinic once wanted people to know in its page on “Herd Immunity and COVID-19” with respect to natural immunity: “[T]hose who survived the 1918 flu (influenza) pandemic were later immune to infection with the H1N1 flu, a subtype of influenza A.” The Mayo Clinic pointed out that H1N1 was during the 2009-10 flu season, which would be 92 years later. That finding attested to just how powerful and long-lived natural immunity could be.

As can be seen from the Internet Archive, however, sometime after Apr. 14 the Mayo Clinic removed that compelling historical aside:
updated natural infection definition

The Mayo Clinic also reoriented its page to feature vaccination over “the natural infection method” (method?) and added a section on “the outlook for achieving herd immunity in the U.S.” This new section stated that “it’s not clear if or when the U.S. will achieve herd immunity” but encouraged people nonetheless that “the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at protecting against severe illness requiring hospitalization and death … allowing people to better be able to live with the virus.”

Why, from people who know better, is there so much interest in downplaying or erasing natural immunity?

Is it because it’s hard to quantify how many people have natural immunity? Is it out of a mix of good intentions and worry, that discussing natural immunity would somehow discourage (“nudge,” in Fauci’s term) people from getting vaccines who otherwise would? Is it simple oversight, being so focused on vaccinations that they just plain forgot about natural immunity? Or is something else at work?

Whatever the reason, it’s keeping Americans in the dark about how many people have active immunity from COVID-19. It’s keeping people needlessly fearful and suspicious of each other. It’s empowering executive overreach. Worst of all, it’s tempting people to consider government and business restrictions on the unvaccinated, regardless of their actual immunity.


This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). Jon Sanders is an economist and the senior fellow of regulatory studies and research editor at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina.

17 Responses

  1. Why?

    Pape size Elephant in the room: NO MONEY.
    Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is set to be one of the most lucrative drugs in the world
    https://qz.com/1967638/pfizer-will-make-15-billion-from-covid-19-vaccine-sales/

    -Global Vaccine Market Revenue to Reach $59.2 Billion by 2020
    https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/global-vaccine-market-revenue-to-reach-59-2-billion-by-2020/

    This is the only situation where trickle down economics works. Everybody involved in the sales, distribution, administration and policing (schools & business that have vaccine mandates) gets a cut. Think about all the incentives schools are giving kids to get the shot without parental approval. Where do you think that money is coming from? A group that was revealed years ago to be a lobbying group for the CDC:

    The National Association of County and City Health Officials or NACCHO. NACCHO is NOT a federal organization. NACCHO is a lobbying front group for CDC and has been heavily lobbying health depts, state legislators, media and medical professionals across the US. This group is responsible for implementation of “closing vaccine loopholes” and bills on the state level to remove parental rights:

    In July 2011 NACCHO issued a very clear policy statement that the time had come for states to eliminate personal belief exemptions:

    The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) urges that personal belief exemptions be removed from state immunization laws and regulations.

    NACCHO acknowledges that there are states that may not be in a position to eliminate personal belief exemptions immediately. States that easily permit personal belief exemptions to immunizations have significantly higher rates of exemption than states that have more complex procedures. These states should begin a process to limit the availability of personal belief exemptions to the greatest degree possible. An initial step might be to review the process of applying for and receiving exemptions: the more educational and demanding the process, the lower will be the rate of exemptions. There should be more involved in the application process than simply signing a form.

    In July 2013, NACCHO’s Board approved this new policy statement, titled “An Immunization Program for all Stages of Life”: or as the Pharmaceutical Industry has stated their policy statement for decades : “Cradle to Grave”. This exact wording is in their policy statement: “An Immunization Program for all Stages of Life”.

    NACCHO has since changed their policy statement when people caught on that it’s a CDC front.

    -Mama size ELEPHANT in the room:
    Vaccines, we have learned over the decades have created in the US the most chronically ill children in the world. 54% of children in the US suffer from1 or more chronic illness. These illnesses need medical intervention of numerous doctor’s appointment, medication, physical therapies of some kind, medical devices such wheelchairs, breathing machines and the list goes on. Chronically ill kids become chronically ill adults. These people don’t see humans, they see dollar signs.

    Why? Natural immunity creates a robust immune system and in order for any companies connected to health to profit, there needs to be a endless and abundant population of chronically sick people. Vaccines & drugs destroys the immune system.

    The Laws of the Pharmaceutical Industry
    https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2017/08/the-laws-of-the-pharmaceutical-industry/

    We can’t forget the Funeral Industry but that’s for another time.

    1. It is clear that the presumption here is in favor of forcing people to receive unwanted pharmaceutical products. It should be the other way around. It should not be easy to opt in to receive an experimental product. The right to refuse should be a simple “No”. Who appointed NACCHO to dictate to me what my personal decisions should be?

      Do we mandate that people own cars? Why not? Why are the only things that can directly physically harm a person the only things government can mandate? Things like fluoridating the municipal water supply, for instance? A person is much less likely to be injured by a car than by unwanted pharmaceuticals. Last I heard, the death rate from auto accidents in the United States was less than 40,000 per year, while the death rate from pharmaceuticals “properly” prescribed and administered is more than 100,000. And that is not counting deaths that are delayed. One of my family members would be in that group, having been given pharmaceuticals behind his back and against his will while he was in the hospital on IV.

  2. IMO, most people have lost any God-center they “may” have had. You have a magnificently mysterious God-given immune system. Without an IMMUNE SYSTEM, we would not be able to even walk around the planet, as we are exposed to COUNTLESS unknown/known microbial assaults every . . . single . . . day.

    All that said: This plandemic has been about two things: GLOBALIST CONTROL and SKADS of UNFATHOMABLE MONEY; not sure which one is more important to them.

    Only God can save us now.

  3. YES!! Where are those professionals who advocate for heard immunity, and other options for people to keep their immune system strong instead of the shot!? Those of us who have been healthy through this whole time have been diligent to our health protocols. We want real immunity, not one that is not fully tested in our bodies!

  4. I believe they are ignoring natural immunity because the testing was so inaccurate & they don’t want to admit how many false positives there were!

  5. So I think most places have gone madly insane with their Covid approaches and implementations. Point being, I am an extremely healthy person with a very strong immune system. I’ve never had a flu shot and have never had the flu or sickness of any kind for many many years. I would be foolish to get a vaccine to mess up my healthy system. That being said, I do wear a double cloth good mask and I have been wearing these mask always everyday, wherever I go. I have a part time vending machine business and today upon arriving at a nursing home facility where I have one of my machines after being interrogated about my covid testing, my vaccine denial and having my temperature taken which was 97 degrees, I was asked to remove my safe and good quality double cloth mask, breathe the air in the facility lobby, put my mask into a paper bag and put on one of their cheap 2 cent paper mask while I was there for 10 minutes to fill my vending machine. I felt that my health exposure to any virus was compromised and I felt very violated. like I said, I think most places have lost their minds.

    1. With your immune system, why are you wearing a mask at all? We need the low level exposure to pathogens to maintain our immune system. As for their cheap mask, no thank you. It probably has microfibers of plastic or graphene in it, which can get into your lungs and cause disease. In fact masks in general tend to set the stage for lung disease, whether it is because you are re-breathing your own carbon dioxide and pathogens, or because low level oxygen is perfect for cancer.

      I have never worn a mask. I have not gotten sick either. And although I would get an occasional cold while the kids were growing up, I haven’t had any other contagious illness since I stopped taking vaccines as soon as I was an adult and had the legal right to say No.

  6. There is no discussion allowed or permitted other than where are you going for your injection, what day are you going for your injection and what time are you going for your injection. That’s it, period! That are no other alternatives to be considered, discussed, debated or even thunk…lest you upset the Big Pharma Gods and invoke the wrath of fauci, the CDC and gates.

  7. Where is the data on herd immunity? Let’s take the next step–Where’s the data on herd immunity from a vaccine? I have yet to see a scientific study showing herd immunity via any means. With the measles it was initially 60% and now, I believe, it is over 95% and yet, the measles outbreak in Disneyland a few years back — The vaccinated were the ones who became infected. I believe the whole concept of herd immunity is still a theory and thus, really should be talked about as such.

    With Covid, I keep asking, “Where is the data?” We don’t have valid tests and we don’t give them to everyone on a regular basis and then track. Without doing testing, how do we think we’ll get data. With the vaccines during testing, only the sick were tested. How many got the disease and were asymptomatic? How many passed it to others? Where is the data. This past year has been the epitome of pseudo-science. There is no science without data.

  8. I am in the funeral and law area and have no wish to see people forced to vax – I had all the childhood vaxes and so I am not anti vax, however I am against untested Emergency Use vax, rolled out at all costs for the desperate or those with underlying illnesses. I am against the get this thing through at all costs and do whatever it takes and say anything to get them all vaxxed. This is absurd to say the least. To throw the guidelines out the window for the sake of a few. To ignore and censor papers by noted people just simply stating be aware, look, test, be scientific, educate – nope shut them down! This is the technocrats at google facebook twitter youtube showing their hand – do they have a vax we dont know about? – any talk of hydro or Ivermectin or other is crushed and this is nonsense as they were debinking these early treatments when nothing else was available – junk papers from Lancet, now retracted, are still being used as evidence from the Johnny come lately’s. Every argument I have now is someone using old data gleaned from CNN or BBC – its old and 1000’s of studies have been done since then. But what does the big pharma machine do – censors it, crushes it, destroys peoples livelihoods and dreams. Shut down all, businesses and companies gone forever. I am in a country where its run by the military and they may force me to have a vax to get my visa. I am not happy about this and sad to say if enough people die or have serious adverse reactions they may change their minds. But the tourist dollar is whats driving mass vax. They should have thought of this before shutting the country down. 1000’s are getting the so called “virus” much of it is psychosomatic and media push to explain the many illnesses people here get, but the test are negative now they lowered the cycle range in the so called “PCR” test. Suicides are at an all time high. Its the blind leading the blind for sure. The history books will reflect the nonsense and they students studying mass communication will be shaking their heads saying how did they fall for the same thing the Nazi’s did? and that folks is history

  9. After all the information on this experimental drug “vaccine” I will not be taking it. If and when I do get Covid19 I will be asking for HCQ or Ivermectin and taking zinc and Vitamin D. This “vaccine” is unsafe and being pushed because of the money to be made on it. Now they are pushing it on children! Is there anyone in the drug industry that has a conscience for a soul?

  10. The first link to Mayo Clinic was supposed to go to the Wayback Machine version showing the Spanish Flu note suggesting the benefit of long-lived natural immunity, but it goes to the current Mayo page without that reference. And the second link to Mayo goes to the Wayback machine, but only shows calendars and the dates when the page was captured. It does not show the actual page image before that info was deleted.

  11. How can anybody discuss anything these days? EVERYBODY IS BEING CENSORED! You can’t even find any protest groups! If you tell most people, they don’t want to believe it anyway. That is why I’m not going to the church anymore. They’re all brainwashed into slavishly believing the CDC actually is an ‘authority’ and not murderers of humanity.

    The general public has become too fat, lazy and indoctrinated thanks to a steady diet over the past 50 plus years of television, fake food, fluoride, incessant propaganda and public controlled school systems.

    Good rule of thumb, if you hear about it on any mainstream news outlet, believe the opposite! Then you’ll know the truth!

  12. Brenda Laronde please do your homework on Ivermectin or HCQ. Your doctor may not prescribe. Find a telemedicine and have it on hand so you can begin taking at the first sign of symptoms. Early treatment is essential! Plan ahead.

  13. I’ve been asking why wouldn’t they be willing to do the research on the benefits of natural immunity? Why doesn’t the news media report the survival rate of covid recovery? Why medical experts aren’t digging out the depth of the role of good nutrition in preventing people from getting sick? Lots of “why” questions on my mind. I would go on further, but the answer is Big Pharma profits. Bingo, right?? ???

    And where is the heck of recovery rate of covid data?? I remember it’s around 99% but I can’t even find the correct statistics. I’m guessing they don’t want us to know.

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