Let’s take a break from COVID-19 for a moment. (Or a friggin’ decade!) Let’s take a look at another much-ballyhooed ‘pandemic’ from more than forty years ago.
Remember HIV/AIDS? It featured a long dormant period in which carriers spread the virus; no cure; no vaccine; no effective treatment; 100% case mortality rate!!! The doom-mongers told us it was the disease that would finally wipe out the human race. There was no way to fight it, no way to stop it, no way to know where it would strike next. It could be passed from person to person in a dozen ways, even from mother to newborn at birth. Many of those sounding the death knell for humanity believed the last human on the planet would die alone from AIDS.
Yet no one has ever died from HIV/AIDS. A great many people afflicted with AIDS have died from a fairly wide assortment of ailments. But AIDS doesn’t kill. Instead, AIDS opens the door wide, and invites other deadly maladies in. Most HIV fatalities succumb to pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other opportunistic respiratory infections. Some die from cancers, including unusual ones like Kaposi’s sarcoma, a once-rare type of melanoma that in the early days was often referred to as the “gay cancer” because of its prevalence among homosexual men who had picked up HIV.
HIV stands for “human immunodeficiency virus.” AIDS, the name for the disease that develops in HIV-infected people, is an acronym for “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.” The “acquired” part doesn’t indicate that the patient acquired anything; in fact, the patient has lost a great deal. AIDS is a disease that strips its victims of immunities they have acquired over a lifetime of exposure to pathogens. It renders their bodies powerless to fight off even the simplest invaders.
There is no direct comparison between HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Though both involve infection by a virus, the viruses in question are radically different, they are transmitted in different ways, and they attack different aspects of human health. But a careful consideration of how HIV/AIDS works can lend an understanding of the vital beneficial importance of acquired immunities.
The truth that shall not be spoken
Now let’s talk about COVID-19.
From the beginning, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been referred to as a novel coronavirus. The significance of that word cannot be overstated. A novel pathogen is one that is new; its potential victims have never been exposed to it before. Humans do not – actually cannot – have an effective defense against a novel pathogen. Unless and until exposure occurs, the human immune system cannot produce antibodies that can fight a novel pathogen. (It should be noted that SARS-CoV-2, after more than two years of traveling the globe, is no longer a novel pathogen.)
This fact is easily illustrated by considering the devastation of the American Indian population by smallpox after the arrival of Europeans in North America in the 15th and 16th centuries. Another example is the worldwide ‘Spanish flu’ outbreak of 1918, which took more lives than the world war that was just then winding down. In both cases, novel pathogens were at work. Smallpox was unknown in the Americas before Europeans arrived. The newcomers, defended against it by their immune systems, carried the disease unknowingly; the Indians had no immunity and died in the thousands from a disease that few white people could remember. The ‘Spanish flu,’ like COVID-19 but vastly more lethal, was caused by a novel coronavirus, one that no one could fight off through acquired immunity.
In today’s situation, unvaccinated people (“COVID naive” in the parlance) who become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus almost always recover without medical intervention. Recovery rates vary, especially by age, but roughly 95% of victims younger than 65 who demonstrate symptoms require no hospitalization at all, and the vast majority can recover nicely in a week or two with a regimen of rest and home treatment, primarily with over-the-counter remedies.
This is a simple, unvarnished truth. As such, it goes largely unmentioned by our government or in the legacy media, which have little use for simple, unvarnished truth.
People who contract COVID-19 and recover obtain an acquired immunity to the virus. (It is sometimes called “natural” or “infected” immunity.) This immunity appears to protect survivors against re-infection with the core virus and its variants, and it appears that this protection is more effective and longer lasting than the immunities claimed by the various mRNA ‘vaccines’ being pushed upon us by our governments.
This is also simple, unvarnished truth. But in this case, the truth is being actively suppressed by both the government and the media, including especially Big Tech entities like Google.
If we are to formulate a rational approach to a disease like COVID-19, good information is essential. Complete information is key. Truth really does matter. Nothing approaching either good or complete information has been available anywhere on the planet from the start. The truth is not being told.
The two key trends in misrepresentation are (1) hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19, both anticipated and realized, have been grossly overestimated at every level and at every point in time, and (2) actual cases of infection have been ridiculously underestimated to an even greater degree. Simple arithmetic based on the reported numbers will yield fantastically inflated mortality rates. It is difficult to pretend that this is accidental. There is ample evidence that the inflation of mortality rates was purposeful, and used to spread panic. It is impossible to ignore the immense damage that has resulted.
I guess 110 million Americans ain’t no big deal…
The journal Nature estimates that roughly 1/3 of Americans had been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in the first stages of the ‘pandemic,’ by December 2020, before the start of any vaccination programs. Obviously, the number of once-infected-and-recovered Americans is vastly higher now, more than a year later. (I hope we all recall that Pfizer, who was first in line with a vaccine, announced in mid-October 2020 that it would not seek to release its vaccine until after the November elections. No politics there, right?)
Of course, almost all of those infected recovered. The vast majority of the infected were asymptomatic, meaning they probably didn’t even know they had it. A very large number were undoubtedly children, who have proven to be almost perfectly bulletproof when it comes to COVID-19.
Every single one of these infected people obtained a measure of acquired immunity against future SARS-CoV-2 infections. But not one of them is being excused from COVID vaccine mandates being implemented around the country and the world.
In fact, there are very few legacy media sources, in all my searchings, that have even mentioned the obvious reality that a stunningly large number of people undoubtedly possess a naturally-acquired immunity that by many accounts outstrips anything available from the ‘vaccines’ of all the major pharmaceutical companies.
How good is this acquired/natural/infected immunity? To begin with, such an immunity is the basis of every successful true vaccine to date. (The COVID ‘vaccines’ available right now are not true vaccines, and are not successful in any real sense, because they do not and cannot either prevent infection or keep the vaccinated from carrying the disease.)
In fact, the actual numbers of failed acquired immunities (people who have fallen ill with a second SARS-CoV-2 infection after surviving one) is impossible to determine, at least if we use data available from government or “trusted” sources. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admits that a natural immunity exists, but refuses to discuss it publicly. The agency alleges that re-infections of naturally immunized people (one type of “breakthrough” infection) have “been reported,” but again refuses to provide any data, or even anecdotal evidence of a single occurrence. Considering all available sources of information, a consensus appears to exist that acquired immunity breakthroughs are few in number.
Perhaps the most thorough investigation of acquired immunity breakthrough infections took place in Qatar in 2021. The study used nearly 90,000 subjects in matched pairs, and found that an acquired immunity had an efficacy against reinfection ranging between 92.3% for Alpha-variant exposures and 97.6% for Beta-variant exposures. These numbers are clearly superior to the roughly 85-90% efficacy claimed for all three of the available mRNA ‘vaccines’ being forced on populations worldwide.
An Israeli study published last August found that “the natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.... The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.” [Emphasis added.]
An article in The Lancet from November 2021 states:
“We reviewed studies published in PubMed from inception to Sept 28, 2021, and found well conducted biological studies showing protective immunity after infection. Furthermore, multiple epidemiological and clinical studies, including studies during the recent period of predominantly delta (B.1.617.2) variant transmission, found that the risk of repeat SARS-CoV-2 infection decreased by 80.5–100% among those who had had COVID-19 previously. The reported studies were large and conducted throughout the world. Another laboratory-based study that analyzed the test results of 9119 people with previous COVID-19 from Dec 1, 2019, to Nov 13, 2020, found that only 0.7% became reinfected.
In a study conducted at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, USA, those who had not previously been infected had a COVID-19 incidence rate of 4.3 per 100 people, whereas those who had previously been infected had a COVID-19 incidence rate of 0 per 100 people.
Furthermore, a study conducted in Austria found that the frequency of hospitalization due to a repeated infection was five per 14,840 (0.03%) people and the frequency of death due to a repeated infection was one per 14,840 (0.01%) people.
Yet the United States national government – at least its executive branch – has steadfastly failed to recognize the significance, or even the existence, of the widespread acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2. The current administration has attempted on a number of fronts to install ‘vaccine’ mandates that are formulated as though the tens of millions of recovered COVID-19 victims in the US have no more immunity than the Indians who greeted Columbus in 1492 had against smallpox.
Even the Washington Post, a staunch supporter of Democrats in general and the Biden administration in particular, has noted in a September 15, 2021 news story, that:
More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic COVID infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild COVID infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against COVID-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.
While we can admire the Post’s rare frankness on this issue, we have to note that the “many elected leaders and public health officials” that refuse to recognize the value or even the existence of acquired immunity are almost all Democrats. This is lunacy on stilts, particularly as it comes almost exclusively from a political party that claims to have a special knowledge of, and reverence for “the Science.”
Now what?
The Biden administration has pressed its assault on the medical liberties of Americans since Joe Biden’s handlers took office nearly a year ago. Vaccine mandates have been attempted on a number of fronts, using the so-called “emergency powers” of a variety of executive branch agencies.
- Through his role as titular commander-in-chief of the US military, Biden’s handlers have pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to institute vaccine mandates throughout the military establishment, requiring every member of the services to undergo ‘vaccination.’
- Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), always closely allied to NIOSH, NIAID, and CDC, has attempted to stretch its emergency powers to encompass a vaccine mandate for private employers nationwide who have more than 100 workers.
- Biden’s US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is attempting to force all medical facilities and providers who receive payments through Medicaid or Medicare to force their personnel to undergo a ‘vaccine.’
- Back in January 2021, Biden’s handlers formed (by means of an executive order) the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, an ad hoc body within the General Services Administration charged with using a little-known law, the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, to force the employees of federal contractors to bow to the needle.
As this is written, the OSHA and CMS mandates have been temporarily blocked by federal judges at the District Court level, and both cases are now before the US Supreme Court. While the cases before SCOTUS do not hinge directly on the subject of acquired immunity, the overall questions surrounding the issue of immunity are being brought forward as attorneys for both sides argue their cases. At one extreme, the court may uphold the government’s mandates as they are. At the other extreme, the court could take this opportunity to effectively proscribe all such mandates essentially forever.
In September 2021, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced S.2846, a bill entitled the “Natural Immunity is Real Act.” A masterpiece of brevity, Lee’s proposal would direct the federal government to “...acknowledge, accept, agree to truthfully present, and incorporate, the consideration of natural immunity as it pertains to COVID–19…” in all actions aimed at fighting the disease. The proposed act has been read twice on the Senate floor, and has been referred to the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Various red-state governors and legislatures have stepped up by enacting state laws that curtail or outright ban federal COVID-related mandates from being enforced. Florida and Texas have met with considerable success in these efforts, while smaller states like Iowa and South Dakota have served as examples of the wisdom of a hands-off approach to medical decisions.
As always, truly effective action can be initiated at the grassroots level. Schools, hospitals, businesses, churches, sports venues, and other organizations are signing on to the Left’s unending drive for mandated vaccinations and other supposedly anti-COVID restrictions. On a very personal level, as consumers and even with our own families and friends, each of us can make known the hidden truths about COVID-19 and the so-called ‘vaccines.’
Rather than meekly accepting a role in what someone else tells us is “the right side of history,” we need to stand proudly and strongly on the right side of liberty.
