Posted on 06/04/2021 8:13:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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 April 14 the Mayo Clinic removed that compelling historical aside:
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.
Almost no one talks about health supplements like zinc and D3 and vitamin c. Not 1 question in my work “forms” that we are now being required to fill out does it ask if I am taking any supplements that are known to help prevent. COVID from entering my system!
My company has a vaccine policy and the preferred vaccinated get all rights and privileges, unvaccinated have to mask up, distance, blah blah blah. Because we have to protect the vaccinated I guess? The policy says zero about confirmed Covid cases with natural immunity. It’s like it doesn’t exist.
Did you know you can buy Fauci merchandise.
He even has a saint Fauci candle.
All kinds of junk.
Unreal. Profiting of the pandemic ?
I think the real test was: How many people are immune from 19 because they had some prior version of a covid? This was the Chinese weapons test. And i think it failed. SARS is bad but really. without 6 governors murdering 250,000 old folks in facilities not designed to protect them you have nothing more than a regular flu season. On the Diamond Princess ship 80% never got sick on a closed ship at sea. That is natural immunity as well. And you can’t use PCR tests as measures. only antibody test are valid.
I do feel like I am being coerced by the government and society to take a medical treatment I don’t need.
I test + for antibodies 6 months after having had covid. I’m as immune as anyone with the vaccine.
OTHER THAN THIS ARTICLE, no one ever even mentions natural immunity, and no one seems to think they wouldn’t “need” a vaccine.
It’s enough to make you go crazy.
The push for the vaccine in absolutely everyone — even those who already have natural immunity — is what really convinces me that this is not at all about the disease.
Holy cow, a saint fauci candle….. I am slightly surprised it doesn’t burst into flames on its own 🤣
Chk out tomorrow.
You are absolutely invested in pushing the vaccine.
The science does NOT support what you just wrote here.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210524110135.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
https://www.contagionlive.com/view/immune-response-from-covid-recognizes-variants
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210312/Natural-virus-induced-immunity-protective-against-UK-and-South-African-SARS-CoV-2-variants-in-hamster-study.aspx
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210409/Does-natural-infection-with-SARS-CoV-2-offer-more-protection-than-a-vaccine-against-new-variants.aspx
In other posts, you claimed that you aren’t interested in pushing the vaccine (a lie) and want to follow the science (also a lie).
Interestingly enough, even the other vaccine proponents here on FR disagree with your push to vaccinate those who now have natural immunity.
😂
I know.
Natural immunity is what I am relying on the most. Whatcha wanna talk about?
No money to be made off of that!
A month or so ago I watched a top Virologist explain how the immune system is very smart. It can recognize a “like” virus from those it has cataloged and take action, same as a human can recognize a child after knowing what it’s parents look like.
Two things:
First, when citizens are panicked by the media minions nobody is interested in letting the status quo clean itself.
Second, after things are getting better citizens are tired of hearing about moot points.
I don't want to hear another word about the manufactured China virus unless it is to hear about heads on pikes! Starting with Doctor Frankenstein Fauci.
I have taken extra Zinc and 4000 mg of Vitamin C daily for at least thirty years. For about four years I have been taking D3 when my Doctor told me that I needed to because my body does not make it on its own.
Oh, with a sign up date over twenty years ago, I didn’t need to read this article.
How many people who contracted and survived swine flu H1N1 in 2009 didn't get COVID-19 in 2019-2021?
“It’s like it doesn’t exist.”
Right, and this is my situation. I had covid and recovered, why do I have to be vaccinated.
I had a mild case, but what if I’d been extremely ill? Would I want to be putting that disease in my body again?
And the way it is just being ignored, like nobody got sick and recovered from that makes me very suspicious. So, for right now, I’m a no on the “jab”.
Another aspect of herd immunity that is not being discussed is that actual case counts are a multiple of official case counts, on the order of 4X. I went looking for data on this and it’s another area for which it is very difficult to find data. And it shouldn’t be, if out public health establishment were worth a damn and being honest and forthright about things. But they aren’t.
I did find this article at NPR:
Why The Pandemic Is 10 Times Worse Than You Think
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/06/964527835/why-the-pandemic-is-10-times-worse-than-you-think
The author’s spin is typical fake news Covid fear porn, but there are some nuggets of real information to be gleaned from among all the dross.
Based on the above, I estimate approximately 150 million have natural immunity. Add in the vaccinated, and we’re at herd immunity, which is borne out by the declining case and death rates.
Add in the actual case cunts vs. official case counts issue in my post above and you will really go crazy. Lots of people had this, maybe ran a fever for a day or two, and got on with life. They never made the official case count, but they have antibodies and count towards getting to herd immunity.
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