Copy/paste of post by FThumb from here
I could, and did, and will continue to, argue with people of good faith on the effectiveness of lockdowns, masks, distancing, IFRs, Ivermectin, and a whole host of evolving understandings around the many issues surrounding Covid and our responses to it.
Maybe I'm right, maybe they're right. But it's a useful discussion and the truth on many of these isn't simply black and white settled science.
But not so with Naturally Acquired Immunity.
As Martin Kulldorff, Harvard Professor of Medicine recently stated:
Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease.
Indeed.
The professor also made reference to the medical community's understanding of NAI going back as far as the Athenian Plague in 430 BC.
‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides
So internalized has the misinformation surrounding naturally acquired immunity become that a recent heavily upvoted comment reply to that quote reads as follows:
LOL you lost me at Athenian Plague. They didn’t have vaccines back then. Only a fucking idiot would put that in writing, in this context, without any sense of irony.
How in the hell can anyone take you seriously after parroting something so goddamn dumb
People can no longer even conceive of how naturally acquired immunity exists, and historical references to post-infection immunity are "goddamn dumb" because "They didn't have vaccines back then."
Chew on that for a moment, and weep for humanity. A Harvard professor of medicine is a "fucking idiot" for referencing the historical understanding of naturally acquired immunity. That's how far, how deep, how polarized, how completely internalized the misinformation has become. Naturally acquired immunity just doesn't exist. Only the vaccines confer immunity.
[head meets desk]
So, as a public service to anyone who might still care, here's my most recent collection of up to date medical studies and expert opinions on the efficacy of naturally acquired immunity.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2
This study followed 52,238 employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System in Ohio.
For previously-infected people, the cumulative incidence of re-infection “remained almost zero.” According to the study, "Not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a [Covid-19] infection over the duration of the study” and vaccination did not reduce the risk. “Individuals who have had [Covid-19] infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination,” concludes the study scientists.
https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176
Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study. In a Cox proportional hazards regression model, after adjusting for the phase of the epidemic, vaccination was associated with a significantly lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among those not previously infected (HR 0.031, 95% CI 0.015 to 0.061) but not among those previously infected (HR 0.313, 95% CI 0 to Infinity). Conclusions. Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
Nearly 40% of new COVID patients were vaccinated - compared to just 1% who had been infected previously.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1427_article
"Attack rate was 0/6 among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus 63.2% among those with no previous history."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8253687/
This study followed 254 Covid-19 patients for up to 8 months and concluded they had “durable broad-based immune responses.” In fact, even very mild Covid-19 infection also protected the patients from an earlier version of “SARS" coronavirus that first emerged around 2003, and against Covid-19 variants. “Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients,” concludes the study scientists.
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(21)00182-6
This study of real world data extended the time frame of available data indicating that patients have strong immune indicators for “almost a year post-natural infection of COVID-19.” The study concludes the immune response after natural infection "may persist for longer than previously thought, thereby providing evidence of sustainability that may influence post-pandemic planning.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4
This study examined bone marrow of previously-infected patients and found that even mild infection with Covid-19 “induces robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune memory in humans.” The study indicates "People who have had mild illness develop antibody-producing cells that can last lifetime.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.21253051v1
This study found a rare Covid-19 positive test "reinfection" rate of 1 per 1,000 recoveries.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19
Research funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in Science early in the Covid-19 vaccine effort found the “immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection," and hoped the vaccines would produce similar immunity. (However, experts say they do not appear to be doing so.)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249731v2
This study found Covid-19 natural infection "appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection" for at least seven months. "Reinfection is "rare," concludes the scientists.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
This study found that all patients who recently recovered from Covid-19 produced immunity-strong T cells that recognize multiple parts of Covid-19.
They also looked at blood samples from 23 people who’d survived a 2003 outbreak of a coronavirus: SARS (Cov-1). These people still had lasting memory T cells 17 years after the outbreak. Those memory T cells, acquired in response to SARS-CoV-1, also recognized parts of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2).
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.14.452381v1
University of California, Irvine, July 21, 2021 The authors conclude: "Natural infection induced expansion of largerCD8 T cell clones occupied distinct clusters, likely due to the recognition of a broader set of viral epitopes presented by the virus not seen in the mRNA vaccine"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.12.443888v1
University of California, San Francisco, May 12, 2021 Conclusion: "In infection-naïve individuals, the second dose boosted the quantity but not quality of the T cell response, while in convalescents the second dose helped neither.
Given that we know the virus spreads through the nasopharynx, the fact that natural infection conveys much stronger mucosal immunity makes it clear that the previously infected are much safer to be around than infection-naive people with the vaccine. The fact that this study artfully couched the choices between vaccinated naive people and vaccinated recovered rather than just plain recovered doesn't change the fact that it's the prior infection, not the vaccine, conveying mucosal immunity. In fact, studies now show that infected vaccinated people contain just as much viral load in their nasopharynx as those unvaccinated
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262111v1
Israeli researchers, August 22, 2021 Aside from more robust T cell and memory B cell immunity, which is more important than antibody levels, Israeli researchers found that antibodies wane slower among those with prior infection. "In vaccinated subjects, antibody titers decreased by up to 40% each subsequent month while in convalescents they decreased by less than 5% per month."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209951/pdf/RMV-9999-e2260.pdf
Irish researchers, published in Wiley Review, May 18, 2021
Researchers conducted a review of 11 cohort studies with over 600,000 total recovered COVID patients who were followed up with over 10 months. The key finding? Unlike the vaccine, after about four to six months, they found "no study reporting an increase in the risk of reinfection over time."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.21255670v1
Israeli researchers, April 24, 2021 Israeli researchers studied 6.3 million Israelis and their COVID status and were able to confirm only one death in the entire country of someone who supposedly already had the virus, and he was over 80 years old. Contrast that to the torrent of hospitalizations and deaths in those vaccinated
https://rupress.org/jem/article/218/5/e20202617/211835/Highly-functional-virus-specific-cellular-immune
Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, published in Journal of Experimental Medicine Many people are wondering: If they got only an asymptomatic infection, are they less protected against future infection than those who suffered infection with more evident symptoms? These researchers believe the opposite is true. "Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2–infected individuals are not characterized by weak antiviral immunity; on the contrary, they mount a highly functional virus-specific cellular immune response," wrote the authors after studying T cell responses from both symptomatic and asymptomatic convalescent patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24377-1?utm_source=other&utm_medium=other&utm_content=null&utm_campaign=JRCN_1_LW01_CN_natureOA_article_paid_XMOL
Korean researchers, published in Nature Communications on June 30, 2021 The authors found that the T cells created from convalescent patients had "stem-cell like" qualities. After studying SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells in recovered patients who had the virus in varying degrees of severity, the authors concluded that long-term "SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell memory is successfully maintained regardless of the severity of COVID-19."
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/
Rockefeller University, July 29, 2021 The researchers note that far from suffering waning immunity, memory B cells in those with prior infection "express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern." They conclude that "memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination." And again, this is even before getting into the innate cellular immunity which is exponentially greater in those with natural immunity.**
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate
Natural immunity to covid is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so. The incorrect hypothesis that natural immunity is unreliable has resulted in the loss of thousands of American lives, avoidable vaccine complications, and damaged the credibility of public health officials
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101
Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf
Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta
https://www.aaronkheriaty.com/work
LEGAL CASE In August 2021 I filed a suit in Federal court challenging the constitutionality of the University of California's vaccine mandate on behalf of Covid-recovered individuals, whose natural immunity is equal to (indeed, superior to) vaccine-mediated immunity. Forcing those with natural immunity to be vaccinated introduces unnecessary risks without commensurate benefits--either to individuals or the population as a whole--and violates their rights guaranteed under the equal protection clause of the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Expert witness legal briefs include, among others, a declaration from several highly distinguished UC School of Medicine faculty members from infectious disease, microbiology/immunology, cardiology, endocrinology, pediatrics, OB/Gyn, and psychiatry.
26 AUG 2021 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, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. 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.
there doesn't seem to be anything here