Interesting. Are you thinking of a particular reference for such discounting?
Of course, the CDC will get flack whether they over-recommend prophylaxis or under-recommend. I’d guess their thinking is that coming down on the side of over-recommendation (excess caution) may prevent more unnecessary illness, and that’s what they’re supposed to do.
We’re still learning about this family of bugs, so it doesn’t surprise me that different studies might say different things. Underlying methodological differences are often responsible, but other sources of variability are no doubt part of the story too. A little disagreement in the scientific community is OK with me. I think it can actually help them extract the facts from the various hypotheses.
The article below was originally published in September 2021. It has been updated three times since then as we’ve learned more. I find it to be a credible approach.
There has been abundant evidence that either naturally acquired immunity, or hybrid immunity offers superior protection against infection and severe disease compared to vaccination alone. This comes at no real surprise to immunologists since infection induces cellular immunity in a way that vaccination with the existing mRNA viruses cannot. Here is a large Israeli study that showed that natural immunity conferred a 13 fold greater protection against infection than did vaccination in individuals who were immunologically-naive to the virus. This article was published in April 2022 when the Delta strain was predominant.
Yes, I have read the nebraskamed article. Here is the actual article from Lancet that it referenced which is a meta-analysis of 65 different studies from 19 different countries, again showing that natural immunity conferred a high level of protection against severe disease. This study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, by the way.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02465-5/fulltext
Here is one paragraph from the above article:
“The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.”
As to why this information, long available in other countries, has been so slow to filter through the main-stream media in the US, and even now is not actively disseminated by the CDC, everyone is free to come to their own conclusions. But the fact remains that the vaccine manufacturers have made billions of dollars and have been given complete immunity from liability and we all know that money talks, especially where the government is concerned.
Here is a video by John Campbell discussing the Israeli study for those who do not wish to wade through it.
One practice (see Merck’s disease in agriculture) of the past is to not mass vaccinate into a pandemic acceleration phase due to immune escape. That is the reason the some experts have “singled out” this vaccine. I tend to think of it as similar to antibiotic resistance even though it’s not the same.
If we were to experience a flu variant with the impact of that in the 1918 pandemic I am fairly certain that there would be a push for mass immunization. If for no other reason than that the most recent round of CoVid showed us that current health care systems were not capable of handling a huge surge.
18 months after the worst of it I was hospitalized for what would have been a banal problem pre-CoVid at this area’s largest medical facility. Not at all a small regional hospital. I pretty much had to blackmail them into the gall bladder surgery - I refused to sign any discharge papers and give them the bed w/o an answer on when and how. This in “normal” times would have been an automatic surgery 2 or 3 days after they got a good look at the state mine was in. Instead they were trying to get me out to the street without bothering. And I ended up pushing myself out of there 2-3 days too early (not a candidate for laproscopic) because minimal nursing support was physically not present. As did my room mate.
Floor nursing staff were constantly being pulled down to more critical care areas for better than half of their shift. I have had more than one surgery, as long as the brain is working I can figure out how to short my time. But if I were more frail or incapacitated…
Most major health care systems remain at low staffing and stretched services. And senior care facilities - my stepmother was in a fairly good nursing home and got thru it OK. But they were having the same problems. I don’t see any way current systems can manage a big surge of patients now or in the foreseeable future.
The time it takes to assess any not-vaccinated immunity would probably not be there in another such event, unless there is a huge reversal of staffing resources in health care systems. We did in fact find out that about 85% of the US population was likely naturally immune to swine flu, but that was long after the surge in diagnoses.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of limited intervention when possible. I have passed on the RSV vaccine. I just don’t see how we get into or thru another pandemic of any nature gracefully with health care systems in the state they are.
Our daughter is a Nurse Manager at a major hospital and comes home exhausted after too many hours most days.
I wonder if she’ll stay at it when her son completes college.
We are losing way too many nurses, health department workers, teachers, local elected officials, and others who are trying to serve the common good. Their work is always hard and often emotionally draining. Then, when hateful political extremists start demonizing them, they throw in the towel. I hope your daughter decides to stay, but will understand if she doesn’t.
The Israeli study also said that hybrid immunity is longer lasting and more effective than disease-induced immunity or vaccination alone. Another large Italian study (Franchi et al; J. Infection and Public Health; Aug. 2023) found disease-induced immunity to be equivalent to that derived from vaccination; it also saw all immunities drop significantly as Omicron displaced Delta. Again, different studies with different variables and different methodologies are likely to yield different results. As the body of knowledge grows, our understanding will improve.
My initial question had to do with the idea that the CDC is discounting or suppressing information on naturally acquired immunity. If true, then there should be a logical motivation for such behavior, but I don’t see it at this point. Yes, it’s easy to follow the money into pharma’s pockets, but what does the CDC stand to gain by manipulating information in order to help Pfizer et al continue to get richer? On the other side of the coin, the agency has plenty to lose if caught.
Instead, I believe the CDC’s (small “c”) conservative vaccine recommendations - that most people continue to vaccinate - has two complementary explanations.
- By definition, people with naturally acquired immunity have been sick with COVID at least once. As of Dec. 9, COVID variants have killed 1,159,864 people in the US; they are still responsible for 2.9% of all deaths. A population that must first get sick in order to acquire immunity is bound to see more deaths than a population with additional vaccine-derived immunity. So, if the CDC is to honor its mission (to save lives and protect people from health threats), it will continue to recommend the extra protection from vaccination.
- In my experience, self-preservation is deeply embedded in the DNA of most bureaucracies, the CDC included. Recommending vaccination for almost everyone, including those with strong naturally-acquired immunity, is an example of bureaucratic CYA. The death of just one high-profile person who skipped a vaccine because the CDC quit recommending them is all it would take to cause a firestorm of trouble for the agency. Risk avoidance is the motivation.
I’d be fascinated to see evidence that the CDC is discounting or suppressing information on naturally acquired immunity. I haven’t seen any yet, but recognize that it’s not impossible. On the other hand, I can easily understand why the CDC might be silent on natural immunity while continuing to promote vaccination.
Please have the last word on this if you’re so inclined. Cheers.
With my health issues, choosing to not get vaccinated for Covid and increasing my risk of getting it in order to acquire natural immunity instead, does not seem like such a great idea.
Of course as the virus evolved it developed a greater degree of immune escape to vaccines as well as immunity naturally-acquired. I don’t believe that any serious scientist suggested that just waiting to get a covid-19 infection to acquire immunity was preferable to immunization. The question is should a prior confirmed history of covid-19 infection have been considered a reason not to recommend vaccination, at least for some individuals. Because the CDC never even considered a history of prior infection in making their blanket recommendations for just about everybody over the age of 6 months to be vaccinated.
As for the CDC, that is a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. The secretary and vice secretary of the DHHS are politicians appointed by POTUS. The commissioner of the FDA is also a presidential appointee. You can bet that Congress and any administration holds considerable influence over both of these governmental agencies.
The pharmaceutical companies have powerful and well-funded lobbies. These companies spent 372 millions dollars in 2022 lobbying Congress and federal agencies. The pharmaceutical companies also make very substantial political campaign contributions to members of Congress. According to this article, more than 2/3 of the members of Congress received campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies in 2020.
OK. Sorry but when the dialogue verges towards political influence over study results I start having some problems. The fact of political influence is not anything new and not reserved to CoVid. It is also why insulin drugs have continued to cost way more than IMO they should.
People can make up their own minds about the effect this has on a specific vaccine or health policy. Meanwhile CoVid was a huge event regardless of machinations behind the scenes.
My co-paddler is just getting over her second dose of COVID. I took no precautions expecting I was going to be infected as was our previous experience. But I never caught it from her, checking three times over a four day period using the nasal swab test kits. Her symptoms appeared to be the same as I had in August. I can only assume that I had the right antibodies from my August infection? I am not complaining, this dose has affected her quite a lot.
I have not experienced this myself, so my best guess is that whatever combination of shots plus natural resistence may leave me in a state where I may never be certain if I have had CoVid or not. But the OTC tests are less reliable results if someone has CoVid at a very low level so is for the most part free of symptoms.
In the fall of 2022, the husband of a Board member of my orchestra who was testing solidly positive took three days later to test positive himself and never had any symptoms. He is a doctor so I expect this is a reliable report. Similar thing happenned with some members of a local Morris Dance group in the last few weeks. Pretty much all of them ended up testing positive for CoVid but only a portion of those had symptoms.
The Board member had staffed the table at a concert welcoming people for us a couple of days before testing positive, with what felt like the start of a head cold. I worked a volunteeer shift at a bird rescue two weeks ago with a woman who woke up the morning after with a wicked head cold and tested positive. In both cases, no one got CoVid from exposure to them. The Morris Dance group members as far as they know only shared it with each other, not the larger world. It appears that when the symptoms are low the ability to spread the virus is as well, at least with current variants.
This seems a good thing now that it really does come on like a head cold. The earlier symptoms that were distinctive to CoVid and tremendously dangerous have (happily) faded for now.
Agreed, but that didn’t stop half the country from ignoring the serious scientists and suggesting exactly that. Remember COVID parties?
The question is should a prior confirmed history of covid-19 infection have been considered a reason not to recommend vaccination, at least for some individuals. Because the CDC never even considered a history of prior infection in making their blanket recommendations for just about everybody over the age of 6 months to be vaccinated.
I’m probably an outlier in this crowd. I have school aged kids and they went back to school full time in late Aug 20. And as an “exempt” worker, I never stopped going into the office, even during the initial shutdowns. I got the initial vaccinations in Apr 21, but didn’t get boosted in the fall.
In Feb 22, I got a very mild case of COVID that my 6 yo son picked up from a classmate at school. Afterward, I looked into how long I should wait before getting boosted. CDC was being conservative and recommended 3 months. My PCP suggested waiting until the fall for the first bivalent boosters. I didn’t make it that far. My 8 yo daughter got it during the first week of school and spread it to three families on Labor Day weekend. This time, I got it bad and nearly ended up in the hospital.
Mine is just another anecdote of course, but it made me think that who you are exposed to and how much virus they’re shedding makes a big difference. That also makes it nearly impossible to conduct a controlled study, since you can’t control for exposure.
I’ve had it four times.
Wasn’t particularly bad
You are a covid hog. You should share.
hahahaha. I would’ve happily allowed someone else to take my turn
But which individuals? People forget that Covid is still a very new virus and there are a lot of unanswered questions. Research continues but it may be years before Covid is fairly well understood. Meanwhile the virus keeps mutating.
The risks of immunization are extremely low if you follow the science, especially compared to a serious case of Covid. A Canadian study puts reported adverse reactions at 6/100,000 and serious reactions, such as anaphylaxis, at 1/100,000. Adverse reactions can occur with any vaccine. In my view the benefits outweigh the risks. I’ve been lucky to have never had an adverse reaction to any vaccine.
There is a huge body of scientific data from around the world, a good deal of which has been largely ignored by the health agencies in the US.
And many other western countries approach to this pandemic, especially in the last year or two, has been dramatically different from the approach taken by the US and remains so to this day. Their approaches have been based on their interpretation of the scientific data.
Is our “science” better than their “science”?
Which are these many other western countries and how have they dramatically differed in the last year or two?
Are there any western countries that have approved Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID? Is the WHO or EMA recommending it now?
There are many, many examples of different paths taken in other western countries compared to the US with regard to vaccine certification requirements, travel restrictions, masking requirements, and a variety of mandates. I am not going to list them for you, you can investigate for yourself.
But I will offer a couple of examples. The CDC is still recommending vaccination for everyone offer the age of 6 months in this country, regardless of the absence of risk factors, history of prior infection, or anything else. Denmark back in the Summer of 2022 stopped recommending vaccination for anyone under the age of 17 unless they were at special risk. Sweden did the same in the Fall of 2022.
As of early this year, both France and Denmark ceased recommending vaccination for anyone, unless they were at unusual risk.
As for ivermectin, over 20 countries adopted it for use against covid-19 including many in Latin America, Caribbean nations, and South America.