It is time for Idaho hospitals that fired health care workers —mostly nurses but many doctors, who had acquired natural immunity from Covid-19 and who refused to be vaccinated, to return these brave people back to their jobs. Most took care of sick patients on the wards and in ICUs before there were any vaccines available. They acquired their immunity naturally, and then returned to work. Many other Idaho doctors and I have offered that natural immunity was better than any mRNA inoculation. We argued in previous articles that the order of protection went from natural immunity to live attenuated immunity, to the mRNA vaccines. Many of the experts in our State and across the country made claims to the contrary and insisted that acquired immunity from vaccination was more protective.
In today’s Wall Street Journal Dr. Marty Makary in an article entitled THE HIGH COST OF DISPARAGING NATURAL IMMUNITY lays to rest once and for all the hubris of the erroneous claims made by the so-called intellectual classes and promulgated by a media with a political narrative. He supports his arguments with over 100 different studies. Many physicians, nurses, scientists, and other health care workers that signed the original Barrington Declaration have supported the opinion that natural immunity almost uniformly trumps vaccination. Louis Pasteur, and Edward Jenner —the “fathers of vaccination” believed the same about smallpox. George Washington recognized that “vaculoation”, the term used in his day, of conscripts with fluid from cowpox blebs did not provide as much protection as if the patient had received fluid from smallpox blebs —though the later created more complications. Two hundred years of clinical observation was substituted by an untested theory that most likely had as its predicate a political motive.
Esteemed physicians like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas from Stanford, Dr. Makary from Johns Hopkins, and Dr. Ryan Cole from Boise Idaho have offered this opinion previously and been met with ridicule. I plan on starting a new award for brave scientists and physicians, who are willing to think for themselves and stand up to the shaming of colleagues, hospital administrators and expert lobbyists and former Idaho Attorney Generals no matter what the professional or personal cost. It will be called the “Galileo Award” named after the man who stood up to Pope Urban and supported Copernicus’ theory that the earth wasn’t the center of our solar system, rather the sun was, and the earth circled the sun.
After being asked for over a year the CDC released last week information proving that natural immunity was superior to vaccination in both preventing infection (3.3-4.7 times) and (2.8 times) more effective in preventing hospitalizations. In trying to save face they claimed that “hybrid” immunity was better than natural immunity even knowing that those with hybrid immunity had the same low rate of hospitalization from repeat infections (3/10,000) as those who acquired their immunity naturally and didn’t get “the jab”. Vaccinating people who already had Covid didn’t change the rate of hospitalization —they continue to promulgate half-truths and the media continues to support their false narrative. I even read a review article in Medscape tonight that made the same claim. “Fake Medical News”
The NIH continues to make the claim that the duration of natural immunity is unknown, and they refuse to let out grants to study the problem. Dr. Makaray at Johns Hopkins did do the study on 295 unvaccinated patients who had previously had Covid. Antibodies were present in those patients 99% of the time at two years. The vaccines have proven to be much less efficacious. They also found that natural immunity was much more effective against emergent variants of Covid like the Delta and Omicron. The two dose Moderna vaccine has proven to be only 61% effective against Delta and only 16% against Omicron. There have been over 100 studies —the most recent from Israel that have documented what Pasteur and Jenner knew to be true. The Israeli study cited by Makaray found that natural immunity was 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. The further out from infection or inoculation the greater the difference.
Thousands of practicing physicians nationwide and hundreds of physicians in Idaho have observed the same thing. People who have acquired Covid-19 naturally do far better than those who have received the vaccine. Physicians talk to me every day but are afraid to voice their feelings in doctors’ lounges and public forums. With rare exceptions —the elderly and those with immune compromised conditions, reinjected patients don’t get hospitalized or end up in ICUs or ventilators. The failure to recognize natural immunity is hurting Idaho hospitals especially in rural areas. The crunch on hospital beds has been the result of bad planning by hospital administrators and government bureaucrats. Last month in Washington State after enforcing government vaccination mandates on health care workers, Governor Jay Inslee lifted the mandate temporarily and even allowed nurses back into the hospital who were recovering from Covid!
An epiphany for the Governor and a recognition that natural immunity is real, effective, and protective.
Public health officials in our country and state have started off using the wrong predicate (hypothesis), ignored contrary preliminary data, tried to marginalize medical professionals who differed with them even though these individuals held impeccable credentials, and to this day they continue to dig in their heals as new contradictory evidence emerges.
My family and I are vaccinated, but I relinquished my government contractors’ card when the Federal Military mandate was extended to government contractors and their families. I took the jab under conditions of my own free will. I knew many friends who for moral or religious reasons or just because they didn’t believe in the science —the largest groups of unvaccinated citizens are millennials and people holding a PHD in basic science disciplines, didn’t believe in it. It would be wrong for me to not stand by the principles of my colleagues.
I believe all health care workers who had acquired immunity naturally and who refused to be vaccinated and were terminated should be rehired immediately with an apology and back pay. Seems like they had a better understanding of the virus than many of the experts. Those sitting on Health Boards and on the Governor’s advisory Boards should all offer an apology. I continue to have faith and respect for Dr. Hahn, but a lobbyist and a retired hospital executive have proven why an ER nurse and an ICU nurse should have had their places on the board. Real information in real time will lead to better outcomes than simply following the heard and repeating a political narrative.
This was a new kind of pandemic and mistakes were bound to be made. We all have friends and family who have died with or from the disease —who knows which. The numbers have stayed the same —I may be off by 5% on each of these but my “rule of 75” tells the story more than trying to understand pages of statistics. 75% of the people who have died have been over the age of 75. Of the rest of the souls who have died 75% had at least 4 comorbid conditions —cardiac disease, diabetes, pulmonary disease, and obesity. According to the CDC in 2019 the all case fatality rate was 2.8 million. In 2020 it was 3.1 million. Over the past 50 years we have become an unhealthy and much older society. Everyone by taking care of their own health —don’t smoke or drink or use drugs, or do crazy stuff, can do more to mitigate their own lives and families against the dreaded political Covid, than any masks or vaccination mandate.
In 2019 the CDC reported almost 38,000 suicides in our country and almost 3.4 million suicide attempts. We had 100,000 drug overdoses last year in the USA. The opportunity costs of not attending to other problems may end up being more costly than the costs of lives and productivity that have yet to be fully understood.
Time to start living.
