Why are we not recognizing natural immunity in the United States?
Over 100 studies from around the world have shown that natural immunity is better than vaccine induced immunity. Yet, many countries, including the United States, are ignoring the facts and data on natural immunity. Public-health officials in the U.S. have cost many their livelihood by requiring that workers with natural immunity to COVID-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated, even though the data has shown they are the ones least likely to spread the infection to others. Many colleges are requiring their students to get vaccinated despite the fact that they are low risk and many already have natural immunity. Now with more than two full years and so many studies having been conducted (and new ones on the way), the evidence of superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is quite clear.
The latest large study which was covered by the CDC and published by doctor Tomàs León from the California Department of Public Health and colleagues, showed that natural immunity was 3x better at preventing hospitalization and 5x better in preventing infection. Specifically, this was with the Delta variant. The study authors, however, warn against depending on infection as a strategy since people who are unvaccinated could end up with a more serious case and are less protected than those who have some level of immunity.
Most who have researched the topic of natural immunity have also not forgotten about the large study from Israel that showed that natural immunity was 27x more effective at preventing symptomatic COVID than vaccines.
Another recent study showed that in those who have been previously vaccinated against COVID-19, individuals who have been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 have antibody levels that last longer than those that only had vaccine immunity.
Dr. Makary recently appeared on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show to discuss these topics. It’s worth listening to. If you prefer to read it, the transcript is below.
| speaker | time | text |
| Buck Sexton | 0:00 | We got to bring the good doctor to you, my friends, Dr. Marty Makary. He is now an advisor to Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, on COVID matters. He’s from Johns Hopkins University Medical Center and is the author of a fantastic like op Ed in The Wall Street Journal, which is up linked to Clayandbuck.com right now on this thing called natural immunity that I think we should all have a little conversation about with a true expert who’s honest. Dr. Makary, great to have you back. |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 0:27 | Great to be with you guys. |
| Buck Sexton | 0:29 | We want to give you the ball and let you run with it here, Doc, you’re the expert. The reality that we can all see is natural immunity is undermined through Fauci-ite proclamation, and the Biden regime pretends like it basically doesn’t exist. Tell us what we found out about it and how it factors in natural immunity factors into what’s going on now with Covid? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 0:49 | Well, the data has finally caught up with these bad hypotheses and policies ignoring natural immunity. We’ve got a giant study that came out from New York and California showing that natural immunity was three times better in preventing hospitalization than vaccines and five times better in preventing you from getting the infection. Our Johns Hopkins team has a big study this week, again showing durability of natural immunity. And I can tell you from the inside circles, two other big studies are coming out in the next few weeks. Natural immunity is now 100% scientifically sound, durable, effective and better than vaccines. Public health officials have been afraid to say so because they don’t want people to just get the infection. I get that. But let’s be honest, because we’ve ruined careers. And when we fired those with natural immunity because they didn’t have vaccines, we ended up firing those least likely to spread the infection at the workplace. |
| Clay Travis | 1:49 | Dr. Mccarry, thanks for coming on with us and for the work you’re doing in Virginia, as well as the editorials you’ve been writing at The Wall Street Journal, which are phenomenal. I just put up your most recent editorial. I’d encourage people to go read it, tagged you in it as well is a big part of this now, and I love it because you’re saying, hey, these people need to be rehired who had natural immunity that lost their jobs. Will we see public health authorities adjust their opinions now, even though this data has been out there for a long time, or do you think I’m concerned about what I’m seeing is people are doubling and tripling down on the vaccine and still not acknowledging what the data tells us about natural immunity. Buck has had COVID twice. I’ve had COVID twice. I feel like I’m in very good shape based on all the data. Yet if I were to go to New York City, I can’t go to a restaurant without showing a vaccine card. I don’t have the vaccine, so I can’t get in same thing could happen in Los Angeles. How in the world are these new results that are so widely distributed going to change the public policy? And do you think it actually will? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 2:52 | Well, Unfortunately, I don’t see the humility required of public health officials to accept this. They have dug in for two years arguing that it’s an unknown how long natural immunity lasts or if it’s better. Well, now we have all of the data. They did not do the research themselves. Other researchers, like my own group, had to do it. And now it’s a settled science. If they just showed some humility and said like most doctors do in their day to day practice. Hey, there’s new data coming out. I had the wrong hypothesis. We need to change the strategy. I think people are hungry for honesty right now. Look at all these companies hiring back workers, Boeing, Amazon, Delta Airlines, Amtrak, the state of Connecticut, state workers. We’ve got hospitals that fired nurses for having better immunity. That is a natural immunity. And then they were social staff like multi care. They called in COVID positive nurses to say come and work even though you’re sick with COVID. We’re that strapped for nurses. |
| Buck Sexton | 3:54 | We’re speaking to Dr. Marty McCarry. He’s the author of The Price We Pay, and it did hit the New York Times bestseller list. So let’s get more copies of it out there, folks. The Price We Pay from Dr. Marty McCarry. We need the truth to get out there, and that means supporting people who are telling it. Doc, kind of related double question here for you. One is you deal with the oh, but get the vaccine even if you have natural immunity, because then Faucey always poses this as like it’s like super immunity, which you look at the reality of whether that’s true or not. I wanted you to address that talking point. And then beyond that, I just want to know. I remember when I was told early on with the vaccines that you want to wait a while because your body already has antibodies. So remember, the CDC had to wait 90 days or something like that. Guidance. I might be told soon in New York City that I’m supposed to get a booster. I just had COVID about ten days ago. How am I supposed to think that? What happened to the old wait a while before you get your shot? Because you already have anybody. So I got a twofer for you. |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 4:57 | Well, Buck, there’s absolutely zero scientific data to support a booster and somebody who’s had the infection and has natural immunity. Zero. And most of the booster policies, as you know, are not driven by data. The only part of that recommendation is older and high risk people. Young people don’t get boosters in other countries. Sweden just said they’re not even going to give young, healthy people the primary vaccine series, let alone a booster. We had the FDA bypass their experts to push the booster authorization. And when they say, oh, you know what? You’re too stupid to understand the details. Just go ahead and get the vaccine even though you have natural immunity. The data are very clear now from the study last week. The risk of somebody who has natural immunity getting hospitalized is three per 10,000. That’s identical to the risk of somebody with hybrid immunity. That is vaccine and natural immunity. So getting the additional vaccine dose did nothing to change the numbers on hospitalization. That’s the honest data. |
| Clay Travis | 6:00 | Dr. Mccarry, we get a lot of questions from parents out there. There now is a push to get children younger than five vaccinated. When you hear those pushes, when you hear those arguments from public health authorities, what do you say to parents out there that are listening to us right now about the danger to their children and about whether it makes sense for them to get the COVID shot, the COVID vaccine? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 6:25 | Well, first of all, on the front is going to burn through the population so fast that we even have Dr. Faucie acknowledging that everybody will get it. So if AMacron is nature’s vaccine for those who have not had access or been eligible for a vaccine, what are we doing immunizing those already immune now, in general with kids, I’d say, look at the kid is healthy, then you can get the vaccine. But just remember that no healthy child has ever died of COVID. That we know of documented that’s out there in the literature. If the kid has a risk factor and has not had natural immunity, then it may make sense. |
| Buck Sexton | 7:00 | Doctor McCarry, what is it going to take, you think, for more people from within the medical community to come out and speak? See, what’s fascinating is we’re at a point now where I don’t hear anyone saying, oh, the numbers that McCarry is pointing out on natural immunity or wrong or this is a fraud or this isn’t true. We’re at this level now where the facts are the facts. Fauche has been wrong about almost everything. Which people who listen to the show. No, that’s how I feel. But that’s what the actual data shows. When are we going to have more people come out and speak the truth about this? Because it’s not over. I mean, they’re still doing crazy stuff in the schools. Fauci is talking about a three dose vaccine regimen for kids. It’s impossible. I just know from reality. It’s impossible to know the long term effects of a three dose regimen for children when they haven’t even had a three dose regimen that they could study in kids for what, more than a couple of months? And the whole thing just seems crazy. |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 7:58 | Yeah, it’s disappointing. I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of doctors that are saying what I’m saying. A lot of them, but they don’t have the platform of Meet the Press and State of the Union and every program with an FCC license that she goes on all the time. And they’re saying, look, the group think got a lot of stuff wrong. They got the surface transmission wrong. They got blocking loved ones from saying goodbye to their dying family member. That was a human rights violation. All the doctors and hospitals were complicit in that. They got natural immunity wrong from our leadership. They got boosters and young people wrong. The who and European CDC is giving totally different guidance, and we don’t hear about that stuff. Do you know in Europe, many places in Europe, you can’t even get the modern vaccine under age 30. They restrict it because of myocarditis and young people. So I think a lot of doctors on the ground are on board with the data and what I’m talking about. But from our leadership, we have a small group of doctors making all the decisions. My biggest concern moving forward is the death data is not accurate. And you’re going to continue to see these inaccurate numbers that are not deciphering for COVID or with COVID. And it’s going to make it look like there’s a higher death toll than there is in reality. And people are just going to point to that if they want restrictions in place forever. |
| Clay Travis | 9:20 | How inaccurate do you think the data is, Doctor McCarry? Because when you look at some of these numbers coming out, the difference. Finally, people are discussing it. Even some left wing, I would say media that the difference between being hospitalized with COVID and being hospitalized because of COVID is around 50 50, which would suggest that about half of the people that are dying that have been attributed directly to COVID are actually dying of other things. What data are you seeing in terms of percentages there? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 9:50 | And you’re right, the media just runs with this. And I believe that Sonia Sotomayor really did believe that 100,000 kids were in hospital, many on dental. She believed that because she’s listening to NPR or whatever else she’s listening to. Look, I talk to doctors all the time, and we think somewhere between 50 and 65% of cases attributed as being from COVID are not really from they’re just incidental. The thing is that number is massively growing because Omicron is more and more likely to be incidental finding. And one study found that there was only one death out of 52,000 Omicron cases. That’s the Kaiser Southern California study. That does not add up with the deaf numbers we’re seeing. The two just cannot be reconciled. So we have a data problem right now. |
| Clay Travis | 10:40 | Dr. Marty Makary, incredible work. I encourage you guys to go follow him. I just tweeted out his Twitter handle. Go grab it, follow it. Imagine what the world would look like, certainly what the world would look like in the United States if we had him in charge instead of Doctor Fauci. I appreciate all the work you’re doing with Virginia. Thanks for making the time for us. |
Dr. Makary also appeared recently on Fox News and had a similar discussion with host Lawrence Jones:
| speaker | time | text |
| Lawrence Jones | 0:01 | None of this makes any sense anymore. Here now Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marty Makary. Doctor, thank you so much because we were trust you on these issues. You know, I looked at your newsletter and it really touched me on a personal level because it seems like you’ve been the only one talking about the facts here. And part of it is our children. They are shutting down schools when we know there is no risk to the kids. And you wrote in your article about students that are the lowest risk population on planet Earth. What did you mean by that? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 0:38 | Well, what we’ve done is we’ve imposed tremendous restrictions on the lowest risk population. We’re using all the tests on low risk population folks, and we’re shunting them away from those who may need it. Right now, look, there’s nothing that represents the overreach of public health more than requiring a College student to get a booster, even though they have natural immunity from prior infection. There’s not even any evidence to support boosters. That’s why the FDA bypassed their technical experts to get the booster recommendation for young people, including teenagers. |
| Lawrence Jones | 1:16 | Doctor, does that make any sense, though, the fact that they decided to just bypass the experts on this, is there any precedent for that happening? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 1:26 | No, Lawrence, people are seeing through it. People are sick of the overreach of public health. They’re sick of the false lexicon of the vaccinated and unvaccinated when we know it’s the immune and not immune, and you’ll still get the common cold like illness of Amacron, even if you have immunity. They’re sick of being told to be tested incessantly with a scarce testing supply. They’re sick of a quarantine for a mild illness and then being told to test at the end of the quarantine with a low sensitivity test. They’re sick of watching children go through high rates of suicide and mental illness. And recent statistics found that 31% of parents now are reporting that their kids mental health is much worse. They’re sick of boosters on young healthy people are sick of all of it. They’re sick of all of it. And we need to stop the nonsense, stop this damage to public health credibility and move on. Because this had a case fatality rate of about zero. 2%. When the next pandemic comes and it has an infection fatality rate of 5%, we better be in a better position. |
| Lawrence Jones | 2:29 | Forgive me, Doctor, but I got to ask you this question. How do we move on? And the reason why I asked you that is because you’re a doctor. You know, you have the same information these other doctors have, yet they aren’t citing this information. So how do we move on as a society when you have doctors that are pushing misinformation? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 2:49 | Well, look, we have to get the word out that immunity works in preventing severe illness. It doesn’t work in stopping you from having the virus land in your nose cavity and testing positive. And we’ve got to get back to common sense, which means, look, if you’re around somewhat vulnerable, be careful, avoid them if you think you might have been exposed. And if you’re sick, stay at home. Let’s go back to the basics of infection prevention. |
| Lawrence Jones | 3:14 | Doctor, let’s talk about common sense. And you’ve had students reach out to you. Part of your newsletter was focusing on those students that have privately decided to reach out to you because they don’t want to be silent. Let’s take Princeton University, for example. You’re required to get both vaccines, and then you got to get the booster and you’re tested twice a week. But now you’re not allowed to leave the county as well. Is there any science that backs that up? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 3:41 | Absolutely not. What we’re seeing now is an attempt for public health officials to impose this sort of covet zero goal, this elusive, unachievable goal of let’s put the lowest risk people on planet Earth in a bubble and ruin their lives, take their livelihoods away. And by the way, we don’t talk about the other things we should be talking about, like obesity and Therapeutics. Instead, we blame the lowest risk people for the transmission in the community. I’ve talked to students at Georgetown where staff patrol the library to see if anyone is loosening their mask to take a sip of water. They go outside in the cold to get a sip of water. Princeton won’t allow him to leave the county. Cornell is requiring masks outdoors. I learned over and over again at our top universities. What we’re seeing is this complete anti science approach, and it’s resulting in a very cruel policy to a defenseless population. |
| Lawrence Jones | 4:35 | Doctor, when this is all said and done, because we’ve been in this for a while now, we know now what’s happening to our kids. We know the effects. If adults want to play experiment with themselves and see how this experiment works on them. I’m not talking about the vaccine, but the shutdowns and the effects of it, that’s one thing. But this is the next generation. So what do you see happening to the medical community? Do they have any credibility when this is all said and done? Because there will be real consequences on the next generation. I mean, we’re already behind, but we’re talking about mentally, does the next generation make it? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 5:12 | Well, the good news is people are pushing back and they’re pushing back with data, because if you look at the data, it does not support boosters. Your risk of dying of COVID after being fully vaccinated or have natural immunity is zero. You cannot lower that number zero any further with a booster, and people are pushing back. They’re presenting data to their universities, to their employers. The data on natural immunity is now matured. It’s incredible, and I think we’re going to see a pushback doctors. We did a terrible thing to doctors in the United States. Public health officials put them on an abstinence only mission to basically stomp out the disease. To try to achieve achieve covet zero and look at where we are now. We’re stomping out virus replication and we’ve ruined lives as a result. And then we silence the doctors. That said no, we’ve got to treat the whole person, not the lab test. We’ve got to get back to the dignity of the medical profession. |
| Lawrence Jones | 6:07 | Doctor. Got I to go but I got to ask you this real quickly. Did we wait too long to start pushing back? |
| Dr. Marty Makary | 6:15 | Yes. Look, we have been told for a long time. Just listen to us. Don’t ask questions and everything will be okay. We were told if you vaccinate everybody, this thing will go away and stop and many of these myths have persisted way too long. We waited too long to push back. |
Additional recent studies showing natural immunity is better than vaccine induced immunity:
- Cross-reactive memory T cells associate with protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in COVID-19 contacts [January 2022]
- Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity [December 2021]
- Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive spike-specific immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection [December 2021]
- High-affinity memory B cells induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection produce more plasmablasts and atypical memory B cells than those primed by mRNA vaccines [September 2021]
- Differential antibody dynamics to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination [September 2021]