Tucker Carlson Triggers CNN by Pointing Out Their COVID Death Tracker Now Frequently Goes Missing - "the Wuhan virus case/death tracker CNN kept on display 24/7 under the Trump administration at the very least frequently goes missing or, at the most, has disappeared entirely. It depends on who you talk to and how often the people making the accusations watch the network"
Harry Moultrie on Twitter - "South Africa cancels contact tracing and quarantining, and pivots to mitigation. Good decision."
Video of German Police Using Rulers to Measure Distance Between People Viewed 700K Times
Prof Lockdown's 'apocalyptic' omicron claims undermine faith in vaccines and have fuelled unnecessary shutdowns - "The Covid modellers at Imperial College have begun to back down. About time too. Over the past few weeks, they have made extreme claims about the omicron variant that cannot be fully justified by fundamental science, let alone by clinical observation. Academic etiquette restrains direct criticism, but immunologists say privately that Professor Neil Ferguson and his team breached a cardinal rule by inferring rates of hospitalisation, severe disease, and death from waning antibodies, and by extrapolating from infections that break through the first line of vaccine defence. The rest are entitled to question whether they can legitimately do this. And we may certainly question whether they should be putting out terrifying claims of up to 5,000 deaths a day based on antibody counts... Needless to say, these headlines have spread as fast as omicron itself. Britain is the Covid laboratory of the developed world, and what Imperial says right now has global resonance. Its dire warnings are contributing to some European countries imposing full or partial Christmas lockdowns... “To talk of 5,000 deaths a day is a very high number. It is risky to push apocalyptic scenarios that are highly unlikely to happen,” said Professor Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute. “What I am more worried about is a loss of trust in governments and public institutions for crying wolf. The mood is changing everywhere."... The second line of defence, what really matters for serious illness, comes from B and T cell memory - either from jabs or prior illness. This carries on long after antibodies are no longer circulating in the blood. Cell memory is much harder to measure but is known to last much longer. “Cellular memory is still there for omicron and remains intact,” Balloux said. The first studies from around the world have begun validating the potency of cell memory against omicron, more or less as theoretical science would predict. A team at the University of Cape Town found that double-jabbed patients still had 70pc of the CD4 T cell response against the new variant, and full CD8 protection, despite the mutations. “T cells are holding out against omicron, and the data is very consistent across vaccines,” they told the US magazine Science. “From everything we know about T cells, this is what they do - control a virus once you’ve been infected. So this is their time to shine.” You would not know this from the series of claims in the past few weeks by Prof Ferguson and his team that omicron “largely evades immunity”, even if they are technically within their rights to use this construction... There is an interesting twist to this. The AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine scores well on cell memory and may ultimately protect better than messenger RNA jabs such as Pfizer-BioNTech, now that we are relying more on this second line of defence. He believes the UK should have stuck with AstraZeneca for mix-and-match boosters. Dix said the political class in the UK - and more broadly in Europe - does not understand the difference between front-line antibodies and lasting cell memory, and is therefore succumbing to unnecessary alarmism... data from Australia is the most “elegant” yet, showing two simultaneous outbreaks of Covid in a well-vaccinated population, one delta, the other omicron. The hospitalisation rate of omicron is roughly half... The high probability is that omicron will disappoint the alarmists and frustrate those of a hairshirt Puritan character who almost seem to want lockdowns as a form of self-flagellation. The rest of us can get on with our lives and leave the antibody modellers to build castles in the air."
Decisive use of AstraZeneca vaccine may have spared UK from omicron crisis hitting Europe - "Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, told The Telegraph that he believed the AstraZeneca jabs offered more robust, long-term protection against severe disease and death than RNA-based alternatives made by Pfizer and Moderna. Britain’s Covid death rate has been relatively flat for several months, and there has not been a noticeable surge in Covid deaths due to omicron. However, many European countries have recently seen steadily increasing death rates and have more Covid deaths on a like-for-like basis than the UK... The key, he says, is that although the RNA jabs produce a more obvious and rapid jump in antibody levels in lab tests, other vaccines may be better at priming another part of the immune system: cellular immunity... The only notable difference, he said, between the UK and Europe’s vaccine rollout was the approach to the AstraZeneca jab. While Britain used its ample stock to rapidly inoculate the oldest and most vulnerable people, officials on the continent besmirched the vaccine’s reputation and dragged their heels on its approval, opting instead to wait for the Pfizer vaccine. MRNA vaccines like those made by Pfizer are based solely on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and produce highly specific antibodies. But AstraZeneca, and other jabs like those made by Novavax and Valneva, used a more well-rounded approach... The decision to move away from giving a primary dose with AstraZeneca and to only use Pfizer or Moderna for boosters was based on various data, including a major study that showed Pfizer and Moderna to be the most effective. But how these lab results translate into real-world effectiveness remains to be seen. “I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves by just measuring antibodies and neutralising antibody responses in the lab as that doesn't follow through for serious disease and death,” said Dr Dix. “If you look at all the data, there isn't a great correlation between neutralising antibody lab results and protection from severe illness and death, they don't seem to correlate. “And that's almost certainly because the cellular immune response is the important thing to stopping serious illness and death.”"
Omicron up to 70% less likely to need hospital care - "People catching Omicron are 50% to 70% less likely to need hospital care compared with previous variants, a major analysis says. The UK Health Security Agency says its early findings are "encouraging"... It also shows the vaccine's ability to stop you catching Omicron starts to wane 10 weeks after a booster dose... The report comes hot on the heels of data from South Africa, Denmark, England and Scotland which all pointed to reduced severity."
More science for covid hystericists to ignore so they can continue with their moral panic. Looks like covid hystericists are going to be pushing for 5 boosters a year
Effect of Covid-19 Vaccination on Transmission of Alpha and Delta Variants - "Vaccine-associated reductions in transmission of the delta variant were smaller than those with the alpha variant... The reductions in transmission of the delta variant declined over time after the second vaccination, reaching levels that were similar to those in unvaccinated persons by 12 weeks in index patients who had received ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and attenuating substantially in those who had received BNT162b2"
So to "protect" other people (essentially all of whom are jabbed too), everyone must be forced to get a booster every 12 weeks or less, or they cannot be allowed to have a normal life, and must be fired from their jobs
This won't stop the gaslighting about how vaccine passports are needed and that the vaccines are very effective yet boosters are needed - all to "protect others"
What is the vaccine effect on reducing transmission in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant? - "the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation"
Clearly those who refuse to get vaccinated are plague rats who are harming others
Some vaxholes still claim that having an abortion isn't as bad in terms of harming others as not getting a covid vaccine. With omicron, which has mutated even more, it stands to reason that the effect of vaccines in reducing transmission is even more, since they are even less protective against omicron than delta But let's just assume that vaccination reduces your risk of transmission slightly. Abortion is still a greater harm to life than not getting a covid vaccine (if you assume that the fetus/embryo counts as a life), since:
- the reduction in transmission is only relevant if you are infected in the first place: an unvaccinated person who is not infected with covid cannot transmit it
- given covid apartheid in many places, one can make a case that the vaccinated are more likely to transmit covid than the unvaccinated, since the unvaccinated have less social contact and so are less likely to be infected and in turn to infect others
- the covid IFR is under 1% (median estimation 0.27%)
- people who could potentially be infected by you can get vaccinated, which further reduces their risk
Whereas with abortion, we know that at least one life will be ended
Israel’s ‘calculated risk’ — a fourth dose to fight omicron without data that it works - "‘It’s much more elegant to decide when you have hard data,” Rahav said in an interview. “But it’s true that if we will wait for hard data it will be too late.”... Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick in England, said it was difficult to justify fourth shots “in a situation where around 73% of people in wealthy and middle-income countries have been (fully or partly) vaccinated … whereas only 12% are vaccinated in Africa.” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said boosters should not be seen as the only way of dealing with the pandemic when other countries are struggling to roll out shots. “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” he said at a briefing in Geneva. “Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic rather than ending it.”"
Israel should just lock down forever, since by the time you get hard data about a new variant, there'll be a new one
Since the obsession with boosters just delays rollout to the rest of the world, covid hysteria is once against self-reinforcing since you get even more new variants
Israel May Give 4th Dose of Covid Shot, Despite Experts' Doubts - The New York Times - "some scientists warned that the plan could backfire, because too many shots might cause a sort of immune system fatigue, compromising the body’s ability to fight the coronavirus. A few members of the government’s advisory panel raised that concern with respect to the elderly... some experts said Israel’s government had still not made the most of other options, such as vaccinating more of the unvaccinated or giving a third shot to about a million eligible citizens who have so far not received one... There was no clear indication of reduced efficacy against severe illness... “We can sit in our academic armchairs and wait for research from abroad,” said Dr. Tal Brosh, another member of the advisory panel, “but that’s a kind of privilege we don’t feel we have.”... some medical professionals have suggested putting on the brakes. Prof. Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist and chairman of the Israel Association of Public Health Physicians, said that Israel was not seeing a sharp rise in infections yet — daily infections are at around 1,200 a day, down from 11,000 at the peak of the Delta wave in August — and there was no evidence that a fourth shot was needed to prevent severe illness from Omicron... Another vocal critic, Prof. Dror Mevorach, who heads the coronavirus ward at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, also urged waiting for more data. “Just because we led with the third dose does not mean that there should be a fourth dose with no scientific basis,” he said. Decreasing antibodies over time is natural, he said, and boosting antibodies may have limited benefit... At first, many Israelis considered their country’s lead in vaccinating the public to be a privilege and a ticket to a quick return to normal life. But the prospect of a fourth vaccination within a year was giving some pause."
If it turns out a fourth shot really weakens immunity, so much for academic armchairs
Vivian Bercovici: Israeli public wising up to COVID hysterics - "one public health official in the room with Bennett counselled prudence, suggesting that the panel should wait for these results before deciding on a fourth dose. No way, decreed Bennett. He and several other members of the panel preferred alarmist hype, referring to Omicron as a “tsunami”; a “train barreling toward us,” forcing us to make decisions in a vacuum. Bennett further declared that a “paralyzing wave” of Omicron will overwhelm Israel in ten days. Said deluge will be shorter but more powerful than previous waves, he warned, and will last for eight to nine weeks. Exactly what he bases his forecasting on, in terms of actual data, remains unclear... What we are witnessing is a spectacle of political leaders — in Israel and elsewhere — guided by vanity, not principle. They have enjoyed two years of public acquiescence to the unprecedented use of unchecked power in peace-time. They have confused public compliance, up to now, with their brilliance in managing COVID, which they persist in likening, two years on, to the Bubonic Plague... Bennett, and others, have invested a lot of political capital in the doomsday scenario and are determined to be vindicated. So. They keep upping the ante. Another week. Another ten days. Another month. You’ll see. Um, no. We won’t. But, having committed so totally to this disaster scenario. Bennett keeps digging the hole deeper. By mid to late January, when “nothing” continues to happen, he can put on his super-hero cape. Tell us we made it through safely to the other side because of his brave and visionary leadership. Western societies have lost all sense of history, perspective and proportionality. The possibility of rogue cases causing more severe illness — from all manner of garden variety viruses, bacteria and vaccines — will never be eradicated. A rational society operates on the basis of probability, which is determined by an informed assessment of sound evidence. Liberal democracies have become a club of self-affirming hysterics. What the leaders of these countries ought to understand is that their dystopian moment is over. The masses have wised up. Time to get real."
She is so optimistic that people have had enough of covid hysteria
Israel’s plan for a fourth shot runs into a snag — its top health official - "The decision to press ahead with the fourth dose drew criticism from some medical experts, including the country’s public health chief, Sharon Alroy-Preis. She protested at a meeting of government officials and medical experts that a trial at the country’s leading hospital hadn’t yet been carried out"
Britain to consider fourth Covid vaccination as Israel and Germany press ahead with second booster - "They also believe that Britain’s decision to increase the gap between the first and second doses to 12 weeks for both the Oxford AstraZeneca and the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines gave the population longer lasting immunity than other countries. Israel, for example, stuck to the original guidance from Pfizer BioNTech of a second dose three weeks after the first."
If three shots within a year wasn't enough, why would a fourth shot be?
Fourth Covid jab: We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months, says JCVI chief - "Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”. In an interview with The Telegraph, Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said “we need to target the vulnerable” in future, rather than giving boosters to all over-12s. Sir Andrew said there was no point in trying to stop all infections, and that “at some point, society has to open up”. He also suggested that “misinformation” about the risks of the AstraZeneca vaccine - espoused by European leaders including Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, former leader of Germany - was “highly likely” to have cost lives in Africa."
Another selfish anti-vaxxer who just wants Grandma to die
Clearly politicians need to crack down on fake news more
Adverse events of Covid-19 mRNA vaccine booster jabs similar to those of first 2 doses: HSA - "Among the serious adverse events, the most frequent ones were anaphylaxis and other severe allergic reactions. Close to 80 per cent of the adverse events were reported in those younger than 60 years old. HSA attributed this trend to the more active immune responses of younger people."
Apparently getting boosted having the same disadvantages but few and possibly none (especially for the young) of the advantages of the intial schedule means that covid apartheid must be extended to the non-boosted regardless of age. Lucky drug companies
Omicron Cases in Singapore: Two People With Boosters Test Positive - Bloomberg
Clearly Singapore must make a second booster mandatory, otherwise you must be fired.
Turkey starts offering 5th dose of COVID-19 booster shots
Repeated boosters of existing COVID-19 vaccines not a viable strategy against emerging variants: WHO advisers
By the time a booster tailored to one variant is out, there'll be a new variant. So the pandemic will never end, due to mass hysteria and a lack of political will (or, indeed, political opportunism)
Repeat Covid Booster Shots Spur Warning on Immune Response, EU Regulators Warn - Bloomberg - "European Union regulators warned that frequent Covid-19 booster shots could adversely affect the immune response and may not be feasible. Repeat booster doses every four months could eventually weaken the immune response and tire out people, according to the European Medicines Agency. Instead, countries should leave more time between booster programs and tie them to the onset of the cold season in each hemisphere, following the blueprint set out by influenza vaccination strategies... Boosters “can be done once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we can think should be repeated constantly,” Marco Cavaleri, the EMA head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy, said at a press briefing on Tuesday. “We need to think about how we can transition from the current pandemic setting to a more endemic setting.”"
This probably won't stop the moral panic over boosters. So it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more boosters people are forced to get, the worse their immunity, so the more boosters they will be forced to get
Weird how so many "experts" tell us that immune system fatigue wasn't real
3 COVID vaccine shots won’t stop omicron variant symptoms - "Indeed, a recent study from researchers at Columbia University suggested that the omicron variant of COVID-19 is “markedly resistant” to the COVID-19 vaccines, antibody treatments and COVID-19 vaccine booster shots"
This won't stop the moral panic about getting everyone boosted and the stigmatisation of the unboosted. Or maybe the "solution" will be to lock down the world again until we get a new vaccine, by which time there'll be a new variant, rinse and repeat, so the world will need to be in eternal lockdown
As U.S. promotes booster shots against Covid, moral questions arise over vaccine equity - "officials and scientists with the World Health Organization and other international public health experts forcefully pushed back at it as "immoral" and "unconscionable." "We're planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we're leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket," Dr. Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief at WHO, told reporters."
Covid booster: Data shows third shots 'not appropriate' at this time, scientists say - "While Covid vaccine effectiveness against mild disease may wane over time, protection against severe disease may persist, the scientists said. That’s because the body’s immune system is complex, they said, and has other defenses besides antibodies that may protect someone from getting seriously sick... They said there are risks to distributing boosters too soon, including the potential for side effects such as a rare heart inflammation condition known as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of mRNA vaccines. “If unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions, there could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines”"
From September. But of course this was no match for covid hysteria
Omicron-Driven Pushes for Boosters Could Prolong Pandemic, W.H.O. Says - The New York Times - "That imbalance, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general, said on Wednesday, will give “the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate.” “It’s important to remember,” he said, “that the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are in unvaccinated people, not unboosted people.” Later, he added: “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic.”"
This is brilliant. Then covid hysteria can continue on for even longer
WHO Says COVID Vaccine Boosters Will Likely Prolong the Pandemic - "He appeared to agree with dissident doctors and censored scientists when he said, “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic.” All of a sudden, the WHO Director-General sounds more like Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting you can’t vaccinate your way out of a pandemic for months. The WHO statements also echo the advice of authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. They believe we should concentrate on giving vaccines to the elderly and at-risk around the globe to reduce severe illness and death before vaccinating and boosting children and healthy younger adults. Tedros made his comments after both Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins tacitly acknowledged recovered immunity’s protective effects... there are emerging reports that the blood tests of omicron patients are not showing the inflammatory markers present in severe disease during initial waves. It seems like an excellent time to hit the pause button on boosters, as Tedros and many other researchers and doctors advise."
I was thrilled to get the first two Covid vaccines. But I won't be getting the booster - " Over the weekend there was hardly a TV bulletin which did not feature footage of people getting their Covid booster jabs and saying how delighted and relieved they were to be doing so. Correspondents barely able to contain a note of hysteria in their voices told us about how important this was in the fight to keep the virus under control, “save” Christmas, etc ad infinitum... I’m not intending to get the booster mainly because I have come to the conclusion that I don’t need it and it has been my life-long and thus far successful policy not to take medicines that I don’t need. The Oxford-AZ pioneer Prof Sarah Gilbert helped me reach that view earlier in the autumn when she publicly spoke out against moving to a policy of general booster shots. Gilbert told the Telegraph in September that vaccine resistance was lasting well: “The immunocompromised and elderly will receive boosters. But I don’t think we need to boost everybody. Immunity is lasting well in the majority of people.” A couple of months prior to that the medical bio-statistics unit at Cambridge University had documented how the vaccines had crashed the Covid fatality rate about ten-fold, down from about one per cent to under 0.1 per cent. Some more recent estimates suggest an IFR of about 0.2 per cent, probably owing to the frail elderly who still form the great majority of fatalities on average benefiting much less than others from vaccination. But that’s still broadly comparable with influenza and I have never allowed fear of influenza to warp my life, nor felt the need to be vaccinated against it either. Neither, as a gym-going 56-year-old, am I frail or elderly. Let alone both... Why then is Health Secretary Sajid Javid – by inclination a libertarian – bombarding middle aged people in decent nick with messages about getting boosters against a disease which is no longer a major threat to them? My theory is that it is simply to “protect the NHS”... Should this argument be a clincher for public-spirited middle-aged people to accept a treatment they don’t need? Ultimately, I don’t think so. Because it misses the profoundly damaging psychological impact of needlessly extending the crisis atmosphere around an epidemic that is over. Broadcasters have barely reported that case rates have been falling for a fortnight or more even though ministers held out against the clamour from parts of the medical establishment and Labour to move to “plan B” restrictions amid alarmist warnings of hundreds of thousands of daily cases pending. Many people currently have a wholly disproportionate fear of being killed by Covid and are leading needlessly compromised lives. Entire economic sectors are still not getting a fair crack of the whip as a result. Rates of depression and other mental illnesses continue to sky-rocket in this doom-laden atmosphere. Well, not in my name. In the absence of a genuinely disastrous turn of events on the Covid front, I say it is time to get over it and give our establishment a bit of room to cry wolf over something else instead"
NHL ‘pauses’ season despite boasting of near-100% vaccination rate
What's the point of getting vaccinated if the world can never go back to normal despite a near-100% vaccination rate? Why don't vaxholes believe the vaccines work?
Tube accidents soar as passengers too afraid to hold escalator handrails - " A London Underground chief has warned falls caused by people not holding handrails “due to a perception they are not clean” is currently one of the biggest safety risks facing the network. There were 12 serious injuries on the Tube network between April and June and 23 on buses, which Transport for London (TfL) said was “a total greater than any quarter throughout 2020/21”... Public hesitancy to touch the handrails on escalators persists despite researchers from Imperial College London finding little trace of the virus on any shared surfaces they swabbed in stations."
More costs of covid hysteria
Depression rates up threefold since start of COVID-19 - "younger adults, people with lower incomes and savings, unmarried people, and those exposed to multiple stress factors were most vulnerable to elevated levels of depression through the first year of the pandemic."
Netizens tickled as chatbot on MOH site gives out safe sex advice when asked about Covid-19 - "When the chatbot was asked "My daughter is tested Covid 19 positive what should I do?", it replied: "You should practise safe sex through the correct and consistent use of condoms, or abstinence, for at least the whole duration of your female partner's pregnancy."... As a chatbox becomes more complex and its database of responses grows, the likelihood of it giving a wrong response also increases. A chatbot that cannot provide the correct answers within two or three questions from users reflects badly on a company, Mr Tan added. "I know a couple of companies who had launched their bots and... shut them down two or three years later, because of the negativity surrounding the bots (which) affected their branding." "
Facebook - "Much of Africa, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East are dirt poor, have no money to produce PPE gear and sanitizers. They don’t have the high tech hospitals or even enough hospitals. They have sub par medical abilities. Some tried lockdowns in the spring but after citizens began starving to death they realized it wasn’t possible. Most people in these countries are operating as if there is no virus at all. Most of them have seen much worse and simply don’t have the first world luxury of sheltering in place and caring too much about this virus. To them, life is hard, death is common and this virus is just one of many they face. Their countries will be last to receive the vaccine, if ever. If the narrative that herd immunity will result in disaster and these countries have had no choice but to just allow this virus to roll through their populations until they reach herd immunity, then where is the carnage? Where are the millions dead? Where are the mass graves and bodies in the streets? I have spent quite a bit of focus on Sweden (which also does not have mass carnage in the streets) but I’ll be spending more time looking at these poorer nations who haven’t had the luxury to behave like New Zealand or even Europe and the US or even China. They have had to face it and deal with it. And western narratives pushers will have to answer when people start realizing these discrepancies."
Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - "Why is the Indian variant of COVID19 on British soil ? Thank you Boris, moron extraordinaire."
"Closed borders is now a left wing position."
An0maly on Twitter - "They never tried to help people with anxiety or isolation during the lockdowns. They just shamed you which made it worse. Unbelievable people don't see this. These people in media & politics don't care about you."
Protective immunity after recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection - "We reviewed studies published in PubMed from inception to Sept 28, 2021, and found well conducted biological studies showing protective immunity after infection (panel). Furthermore, multiple epidemiological and clinical studies, including studies during the recent period of predominantly delta (B.1.617.2) variant transmission, found that the risk of repeat SARS-CoV-2 infection decreased by 80·5–100% among those who had had COVID-19 previously (panel). The reported studies were large and conducted throughout the world... authors of a study conducted among recovered individuals who had experienced mild SARS-CoV-2 infection reported that mild infection induced a robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune memory in humans. It important to note that antibodies are incomplete predictors of protection. After vaccination or infection, many mechanisms of immunity exist within an individual not only at the antibody level, but also at the level of cellular immunity. t is known that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces specific and durable T-cell immunity, which has multiple SARS-CoV-2 spike protein targets (or epitopes) as well as other SARS-CoV-2 protein targets. The broad diversity of T-cell viral recognition serves to enhance protection to SARS-CoV-2 variants... Researchers have also found that people who recovered from SARS-CoV infection in 2002–03 continue to have memory T cells that are reactive to SARS-CoV proteins 17 years after that outbreak... Some people who have recovered from COVID-19 might not benefit from COVID-19 vaccination. In fact, one study found that previous COVID-19 was associated with increased adverse events following vaccination with the Comirnaty BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer–BioNTech). In addition, there are rare reports of serious adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination... Although longer follow-up studies are needed, clinicians should remain optimistic regarding the protective effect of recovery from previous infection. Community immunity to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic can be reached with the acquired immunity due to either previous infection or vaccination. Acquired immunity from vaccination is certainly much safer and preferred. Given the evidence of immunity from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, however, policy makers should consider recovery from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection equal to immunity from vaccination for purposes related to entry to public events, businesses, and the workplace, or travel requirements."
Natural immunity doesn't make anyone any money
Research from Malawi suggests Africa may have reached the pandemic's holy grail - "When the results of his study came in, Kondwani Jambo was stunned. He's an immunologist in Malawi. And last year he had set out to determine just how many people in his country had been infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic began. Jambo, who works for the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, knew the total number of cases was going to be higher than the official numbers. But his study revealed that the scale of spread was beyond anything he had anticipated — with a huge majority of Malawians infected long before the omicron variant emerged... the finding suggests that it has now been months since Malawi entered something akin to what many countries still struggling with massive omicron waves consider the holy grail: the endemic stage of the pandemic, in which the coronavirus becomes a more predictable seasonal bug like the flu or common cold... Similar studies have been done in other African countries, including Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa, adds Jambo. "And practically in every place they've done this, the results are exactly the same" — very high prevalence of infection detected well before the arrival of the omicron variant. Jambo thinks the findings from the blood samples in Malawi explain a key feature of the recent omicron wave there: The number of deaths this time has been a fraction of the already low number during previous waves. Less than 5% of Malawians have been fully vaccinated. So Jambo says their apparent resistance to severe disease was likely built up as a result of all the prior exposure to earlier variants. "Now we have had the beta variant — we have had the delta variant and the original," notes Jambo. "It seems like a combination of those three has been able to neutralize this omicron variant in terms of severe disease." And now that the omicron wave has peaked across Africa, country after country there seems to have experienced the same pattern: a huge rise in infections that has not been matched by a commensurate spike in hospitalizations and death. Shabir Madhi is a prominent vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. "I think we should draw comfort from the fact that this has been the least severe wave in the country," he says. The most likely reason, he says, is that — like Malawi — South Africa gained immunity through prior infections... "I think we've reached a turning point in this pandemic. What we need to do is learn to live with the virus and get back to as much of a normal society as possible." What does that look like? For one thing, says Mahdi, "we should stop chasing just getting an increase in the number of doses of vaccines that are administered." Vaccination efforts should be more tightly targeted on the vulnerable: "We need to ensure that at least 90% of people above the age of 50 are vaccinated." Similarly, when the next variant comes along, Mahdi says, it will be important not to immediately panic over the mere rise in infections. This rise will be inevitable, and any policy that's intended to stop it with economically disruptive restrictions, such as harsh COVID-19 lockdowns, isn't just unnecessarily damaging — "it's fanciful thinking." Instead, officials should keep an eye out for the far more unlikely scenario of a rise in severe illness and death."
Weird. The "experts" told us that natural immunity was dangerous and didn't work
