Naturally Acquired Immunity Versus Vaccine Acquired Immunity

Science and public policy seem to disagree over which one is better. Given the natural protection provided to people who recover from COVID, why is the CDC so eager to get every eligible American vaccinated?

“He’s got a pass!” said the dad sitting across from me at the airport in Bismarck, North Dakota, where we were both stranded due to flight delays. He gestured to his 5-year-old son.

“Had a slight fever and tested positive for COVID. We had to keep him home from school for a couple weeks. Then, he tested negative and was good to go. I got the vaccine. My wife did, too. But he can travel anywhere without any testing, and there’s no vaccine for his age anyway.”

Since the beginning of July in Germany, where that family lives, if you can demonstrate proof of being COVID-recovered and then have a subsequent negative COVID test, you are considered immune. For six months anyway, according to the German government.

But in the United States, where my family lives, even those who are COVID-recovered (and show high protection via either antibody or T-cell testing) are being told they also must get vaccinated. Indeed, the CDC has been actively urging Americans who have already had COVID to get the vaccine.

America’s federal and state health officials, via the mainstream media and social media, as well as on their official channels, insist that COVID vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone.

A CDC statement from August sums up the official position nicely: “New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection Than Previous COVID-19 Infection.”

“If you have had COVID-19 before please still get vaccinated,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky urged the public in that release. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.”

But is it really?

Despite sensationalist headlines, reinfection with COVID-19 appears to be exceedingly rare. If you are unvaccinated and have had COVID, the chances of you getting it again are slim. A preliminary report from Israeli scientists shows that out of 149,735 people in Israel with confirmed COVID-19 cases (documented via positive PCR tests) only 154 people had evidence of reinfection, which is about 1 in 1,000.

Another study, however, suggests that the chances of reinfection are even lower than 1 in 1,000. Cleveland Clinic scientists who examined a cohort of 52,238 employees found no cases of reinfection among unvaccinated people with evidence of prior SARS-Co-V-2 infections.

The same study showed that vaccinated people who hadn’t had COVID-19 had a lower risk of infection than unvaccinated people. Still, the researchers concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.”

The benefits of naturally acquired immunity may go beyond protection against COVID. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is part of a family of viruses known as sarbecoviruses. Symptoms vary widely in different people, but these viruses can create severe acute respiratory syndromes that usually begin with a fever and body aches, according to the CDC.

There have been two previous SARS outbreaks. A 2003 outbreak thought to have originated in China in 2002 infected about 8,098 people and led to about 774 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Another smaller SARS outbreak occurred in 2004.

Both of these outbreaks were self-limiting: humans managed to overcome the illnesses naturally without mass vaccination campaigns. Research on these other sarbecovirus infections is limited, but it seems that when we acquire natural immunity to these viruses, it helps protect us against future disease.

To study this, scientists in San Francisco took blood from people who had had previous COVID infections (SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-Co-V) and assessed 12 antibodies in the blood. As reported in Nature, the California researchers found that one antibody in particular (S2H97) was able to bind to a range of sarbecovirus infections and keep the viruses from spreading in lab experiments. When they tested the antibody in hamsters, it kept the rodents from getting sick.

This “super antibody,” which was acquired naturally, essentially blocked SARS viruses from spreading to other cells. While the research is being used to promote the idea of developing a broad-ranging vaccine, it also shows that there may be long-lasting benefits to natural infection.

With other infectious diseases caused by viruses, we have seen that natural infection provides longer-lasting protection than vaccine immunity. For example, a 2017 study of adults in the Czech Republic published in the scientific journal PLOS One showed that the highest protection against the measles, as measured by antibody levels in people’s blood, was in people over 50 years of age who were naturally infected before the implementation of a measles vaccine.

Other research on swine flu (H1N1) published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 2011, found “extraordinarily” powerful antibodies in the blood of nine people who caught the swine flu naturally and recovered from it.

Though, again, this research was showcased by news reports as evidence that it may be possible to develop a one-size-fits-all vaccine against different strains of flu viruses, what it actually demonstrates is that recovering from naturally acquired viral infections not only gives people short-term immunity against other viruses but may also be of lasting benefit in fighting off other viral infections as well.

Because SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus and the vaccines to protect against it only became available in January, it isn’t scientifically possible to know the long-term protection offered by either the infection or the vaccines.

As more data comes in, however, it appears that even mild infection can provide robust protection from COVID-19 infection. A study from July evaluated 254 COVID-19 patients for up to eight months and found “durable broad-based immune responses,” even among COVID-recovered patients who had only mild symptoms.

Other recent data also suggests that natural immunity is long-lasting. A study from Finland published in September in the European Journal of Immunology found that in COVID-recovered patients protection against reinfection persisted for over a year.

Yet another large study from August looked at a database of 2.5 million Israelis and found 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.”

This Israeli study found that people who were vaccinated who hadn’t been previously infected were 6 to 13 times more likely to get infected with COVID-19 than unvaccinated people who had already had the illness.

“It’s a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination,” Charlotte Thalin, an immunology researcher and specialist in internal medicine who is based in Stockholm, Sweden, told Science.org.

Given the natural protection provided to people who recover from COVID, why is the CDC so eager to get every eligible American vaccinated, even those who have recovered and have naturally acquired immunity?

The CDC press release references only two reports. The first report showed that unvaccinated people in Kentucky were nearly 2 1/2 times more likely to get re-infected with COVID compared to fully vaccinated individuals.

The second CDC report, co-authored by more than 40 medical doctors and public health officials (several of whom disclose direct ties to the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and profiting from these vaccines), looked at hospitalization rates of adults aged 65 and older. It concluded that “among adults aged 65-74 years, effectiveness of full vaccination for preventing hospitalization was 96 percent for Pfizer-BioNTech, 96 percent for Moderna, and 84 percent for Janssen COVID-19.”

The second report cited by the CDC excluded hospitalized patients who had only one dose of any COVID vaccine less than 14 days prior. It also didn’t specify if those who were vaccinated or those who were unvaccinated had a history of prior infection.

So that report sheds no light on whether vaccine immunity is more long-lasting than immunity from infection and offers no evidence to justify the idea that COVID-recovered patients should get vaccinated.

The CDC didn’t mention other studies that showed findings contrary to the Kentucky study. It’s unclear whether the agency reviewed those studies and found the Kentucky study to be stronger or only considered the Kentucky study in making their policy to recommend and require that the previously infected get the vaccine.

Meanwhile, much of the established science supports the superiority of acquired immunity. That fact has put some people, such as Laurie Lentz-Marino, in a difficult position as they try to balance the consequences of not complying with vaccine mandates against their understanding of what’s in the best interest of their health.

“Vaccine-induced immunity can never be as long-lasting and robust as naturally acquired immunity,” said Lentz-Marino, who taught chemistry and biology classes at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for more than 20 years. “The human immune system knows what it’s doing. We are an incredibly successful species. There would not be close to 8 billion people on the planet otherwise.”

Lentz-Marino, 61, recently resigned from her teaching position over vaccine and mask mandates at the college.

“It’s a sad joke to think that we know better than Mother Nature. We’re going in the wrong direction. It’s really arrogant to think that we can re-design our immune systems.”

Judith Smentkiewicz of Cheektowaga, New York, was given a 20 percent chance to live. She had COVID-19 and was on a ventilator at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital. Her son and daughter asked the doctors to give her ivermectin.

When the doctors refused, the family hired two lawyers, Ralph C. Lorigo and Jon F. Minear, to sue the hospital. A state Supreme Court judge ruled in their favor and ordered the hospital to give Smentkiewicz the ivermectin.

According to an article in the Buffalo News, in less than 48 hours, Smentkiewicz was off the ventilator, out of intensive care, and able to sit up on her own. Her family and attorneys are sure that the ivermectin had saved her life.

At the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t recommend ivermectin. The FDA hasn’t approved or authorized its use for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people or in animals.

“Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19,” the FDA’s website reads. “Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing.”

Still, ivermectin, which was discovered in the late 1970s, has been in use for decades, initially as a veterinary medicine to kill parasites in commercial livestock and domestic animals. It was then found to be an effective anti-parasitic for humans as well, most notably to treat elephantiasis in Africa and Southeast Asia, as well as river blindness (onchocerciasis), which is also endemic in Africa and in several countries in Latin and South America.

The drug has helped hundreds of millions of people and literally billions of farm animals fight against parasites. In fact, it has been so useful in the fight against infections caused by roundworm parasites that two scientists, William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for their discoveries regarding the medicine, according to The Nobel Prize Committee.

Ivermectin also has antibiotic and anti-cancer properties, as well as well-documented antiviral properties. Indeed, ivermectin has been shown to be a potent anti-viral against several infectious viruses, including West Nile, Dengue, yellow fever, and influenza A.

But the drug remains extremely controversial for the treatment of COVID-19. Those who champion it insist that ivermectin is a cheap, widely available, and helpful treatment for SARS-CoV-2. Its critics say that not only is it not a miracle cure, but giving patients “false hope” by promising that ivermectin can help them “could have deadly consequences.”

Ivermectin’s mechanism -- how it works against viruses -- is well understood. A virus can’t reproduce like a living cell: It has to enter another cell and hijack the DNA in the host cell’s nucleus in order to replicate. Ivermectin makes it harder for the virus to enter the host’s cells, inhibiting a virus from getting into the cell nucleus (where the DNA the virus needs to reproduce is located) and interfering with the virus’s ability to replicate.

Ivermectin also appears to have a side benefit in treating COVID-19: It seems to reduce the body’s cytokine response, dampening the dreaded cytokine storm that has been found to be one of the biggest dangers in acute COVID-19 infections.

Knowing that it’s an effective anti-viral, South African pulmonary critical care specialist Dr. Paul Marik, professor of medicine and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, who has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed journal articles, 50 book chapters, and four critical care books, along with Dr. Pierre Kory, who spent more than five years as the chief of the critical care service at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, along with other doctors (including cardiologist Peter McCullough), decided to try this cheap and widely-available drug to treat their COVID-19 patients.

One of the reasons for trying ivermectin was accessibility. People in many poorer regions -- including South America, India, and sub-Saharan Africa -- had access to the drug to treat parasite diseases. In France, it was also available over the counter for the treatment of lice. In 2012, Reuters News reported on an industry-funded study that found that application of an ivermectin hair lotion could kill head lice and their eggs in just 10 minutes.

Although the federal government focused its attention on developing a vaccine to prevent infections in the first place, many front-line doctors looked for effective ways to treat patients who were coming down with COVID-19. According to an extremely detailed article published in Mountain Home magazine in May, from the beginning of the pandemic, Marik and Kory had good outcomes by treating COVID-19 with a combination of steroids and anti-coagulants. In March 2020, they shared this experimental clinical protocol, known as MATH-plus, and have shared it with other critical care specialists and the public.

The MATH part of the protocol stood for Methylprednisolone (a steroid), Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C), Thiamine (a B vitamin), and Heparin (an anticoagulant). The plus part of the protocol included second- and third-line treatments based on the individual patients presenting symptoms. The MATH-plus protocol was intended for hospitalized patients.

Seven months later, in October 2020, the frontline doctors added ivermectin to their original recommendations, calling it “a core medication in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19” on the covid10criticalcare.com website.

“Our medical discovery of a rapidly growing published medical evidence base, demonstrating ivermectin’s unique and highly potent ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication and to suppress inflammation, prompted our team to use ivermectin for prevention and treatment in all stages of COVID-19,” the frontline doctors -- who have formed a nonprofit known as the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance -- explained on their site.

The I-MASK-plus protocol, which is centered around ivermectin, is now being used to prevent and treat COVID-19 before it gets severe.

“Fun fact,” Kory wrote on Twitter on Oct. 7. “Between 100-200 United States Congress Members (plus many of their staffers & family members with COVID) were treated by a colleague over the past 15 months with ivermectin & the I-MASK+ protocol at flccc.net. None have gone to [the] hospital. Just sayin’.”

In 2020, a team of scientists from Australia decided to see if ivermectin could also treat SARS. Their study, published in June 2020 in the journal Antiviral Research, showed that it effectively prohibited SARS-CoV-2 from replicating in laboratory cells, resulting in a 5,000-fold reduction in viral load within 48 hours.

But, critics point out, testing a drug via cells in a petri dish is very different from testing a drug in humans. Yahoo News dismissed Marik and Kory as “fringe doctors” in September and, in October, the BBC reported that “false science” is the driving force behind the enthusiasm for ivermectin.

In the midst of dealing with a novel virus -- as well as the fallout from government policies on how to stop it -- it’s extraordinarily difficult to parse out which treatments are actually effective and which are working only due to the placebo effect.

Many dismiss ivermectin as “horse paste” and “quackery.” But a compilation of extensive data from studies across the world, which was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics four months ago, shows that ivermectin was effective across the board. In this peer-reviewed report, a team of five doctors, including Marik and Kory, analyzed the results of 24 randomized controlled trials involving 3,406 participants from countries across the world, ranging from Argentina to Bangladesh to Spain.

Their analysis suggested that ivermectin was effective prophylactically at preventing infection in Argentina, France, and Bangladesh. Indeed, among people who were already being treated with ivermectin for parasite prevention, infection rates were a fraction of the rates of the people in the same region who weren’t treated with ivermectin, which is one reason for the front-line doctors’ recommendation to use it as a prophylactic.

The same review showed that ivermectin may also be effective at other stages of COVID-19 infection. In studies of mildly ill outpatients given ivermectin in Spain, Nigeria, Iraq, and the Dominican Republic, thousands of patients improved with early treatment, experiencing better outcomes than patients who didn’t receive the drug.

The review also found that, among sicker, hospitalized patients in Iraq, India, Brazil, and Florida, severity and complications were decreased with ivermectin treatment, and fewer people died.

When critics challenged the integrity of one of the studies that was originally included in the review, which was from India but had been retracted, Marik’s team removed it from their data and published a response to the criticism in the next issue of the same journal. Even without the Indian study, Marik’s team insisted, the combined data from the other 30 studies were still positive, showing statistically significant and substantial improvement in outcomes with the use of ivermectin.

The same month that the review came out, a Forbes report claimed there was no evidence of ivermectin’s effectiveness, except for one study based on cell samples in Petri dishes. The Forbes report also came one month after a review of previous ivermectin studies had already concluded that people on the drug showed a 56 percent improved survival rate. Other mainstream media reports on the drug have ignored all clinical research and described it as nothing more than a horse dewormer.

In October 2020, then-President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 and spent three days at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before returning to the White House on Oct. 5. Trump told the American people that he had been given ivermectin, along with other remedies. Practically overnight, treating the disease with ivermectin became associated with the political right. And Big Tech began censoring people who shared information about the drug.

I was one of them. Shortly after the Buffalo News article about Judith Smentkiewicz’s successful treatment with ivermectin was published, I was temporarily banned from Facebook for posting a quote from the Buffalo News and a link to the article itself, with no other commentary, on my personal profile.

At the time when Facebook and other platforms were censoring news about ivermectin, preventive measures such as double masking, wearing personal protective equipment, draconian social distancing, and social isolation, as well as vaccination became associated with the political left, even though the U.S. government’s Project Warp Speed (to develop a safe and effective vaccine in record time) was initiated during a Republican administration.

News outlets began referring to ivermectin as “horse paste,” suggesting that the drug was only for animals. It’s unclear if those reporters or media outlets were aware that people regularly take ivermectin in pills sized for human dosages calibrated by body weight. Ivermectin is one of the 400 most commonly prescribed medicines for humans and won its inventor a Nobel Prize after it cured two major diseases.

While clinical trials of ivermectin are ongoing in regard to COVID-19, it’s included on the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines with a long-established safety record.

Interestingly, another antiviral that may slow the virus more effectively is on the way. Taxpayer money has funded a forthcoming drug to treat COVID-19 to the tune of several million dollars, according to an investigation by STAT News. Though its mechanism is completely different, Molnupiravir has been touted as a COVID-19 cure, and proponents say that it reduces viral replication several times more effectively than ivermectin. It also costs more than $700 per course of treatment, and it isn’t yet available to the public.

The fate of this drug, too, has swung with the politics: When the Trump administration poured money into it, it was reviled by most of the media. But now that the Biden administration is continuing to fund research about it, Molnupiravir is being hailed as a cure.

Despite the controversy and politically motivated demonization, ivermectin is far from dead as a COVID-19 treatment. The University of Oxford is currently conducting a large-scale controlled study to see if it’s effective in preventing severe COVID-19 and keeping patients out of the hospital.

The Oxford data, once it’s published, will certainly help inform the debate around ivermectin. But controversies over effective treatments for COVID-19 likely won’t stop any time soon.

A Cochrane review of ivermectin is a case in point. Cochrane reviews are supposed to be the gold standard for research reviews. They are supposed to evaluate the available research and use existing evidence to provide a final opinion of sorts. But the Cochrane review used relatively narrow criteria to sharply limit the studies included. The reasoning was to better ensure that only studies that looked very closely at ivermectin were included, and not those that included ivermectin in more complex protocols that may see it paired with other drugs or treatments.

That limitation has raised concerns from other ivermectin researchers, including Edmund J Fordham, about the efficacy of the review. Meanwhile, the Cochrane review takes issue with the varying quality of clinical trials that have made up other reviews on ivermectin. It’s a complex issue with layers of issues, but the more research conducted, the clearer the picture becomes.

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Proclaiming YEHOVAH's Truth Without Fear or Favor!

Hope of Israel Ministries
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www.hope-of-israel.org

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