This was an excellent interview by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton of Marty Makary about his WALL STREET JOURNAL article
Here are some other articles worth noting:
- Youngkin Appoints Fox News Contributor Marty Makary as Head Of Virginia Medical Advisory Team (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
- 146 Research Studies Affirm Naturally Acquired Immunity to Covid-19: Documented, Linked, and Quoted (BROWNNSTONE)
- Natural Immunity Superior to Vaccine Immunity, CDC Study Finds (DAILY SCEPTIC)
- Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (BROWNSTONE)
Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article reproduced in full:
The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid: Vaccines were wasted on those who didn’t need them, and people who posed no risk lost jobs.
Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.
For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.
Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.
Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.
The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.
None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick.
Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question. Many, including Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC’s director, signed the John Snow memorandum in October 2020, which declared that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”
Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide had have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders. Meanwhile, public-health officials recklessly destroyed the careers of everyday Americans, rallying to fire pilots, truck drivers and others in the supply-chain workforce who didn’t get vaccinated. And in the early months of the vaccine rollout, when supplies were limited, we could have saved many more lives by giving priority to those who didn’t have recorded natural immunity.
The failure to recognize the data on natural immunity is hurting U.S. hospitals, especially in rural areas. MultiCare, a hospital system in Washington state, fired 55 staff members on Oct. 18 for being out of compliance with Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate—and that was in addition to an undisclosed number of staffers who quit ahead of the vaccination deadline. The loss of workers contributed to a full-blown staffing crisis.
It got so bad that the hospital summoned staff who were Covid-positive to return to work even if they were sick, according to an internal memo obtained by Jason Rantz of KTTH radio. The memo stated that “positive staff with mild to moderate illness” could work, so long as they wear appropriate personal protective equipment, don’t take breaks with others, and agree to stay home “if symptoms worsen.” Managers were recommended to assign Covid-positive staff to Covid-positive patients and vaccinated patients, but not immunosuppressed patients.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the hospital mandate national by decreeing that all medical facilities under its jurisdiction require vaccination for employees, including those with natural immunity. The Supreme Court upheld the rule on Jan. 13, the same day it issued a stay against a similar mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which OSHA formally withdrew Tuesday.
Connecticut has suspended its vaccine mandate for state employees, and Starbucks is rehiring employees fired for being unvaccinated. Other states and businesses should follow their lead. Politicians and public-health officials owe an apology to Americans who lost their jobs on the false premises that only unvaccinated people could spread the virus and only vaccination could prevent its spread. Soldiers who have been dishonorably discharged should be restored their rank. Teachers, first responders, and others who have been denied their livelihood should be reinstated. Everyone is essential.
Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It.”
Here is the other article I opted to reproduce in full in case it disappears behind a pay-wall, via the BALTIMORE SUN
University Of Maryland’s ‘Heavy-Handed’ Booster Mandate Not Warranted By Science | Guest Commentary
When historians look back at the COVID-19 pandemic, one of many confounding details will be the enthusiasm with which colleges and universities imposed ever-expanding draconian measures on their low-risk student body. Hundreds of U.S. colleges required all faculty, staff, and students to be vaccinated upon Emergency Use Authorization of COVID vaccines. Yet students remain masked indoors (and sometimes out), subject to random asymptomatic testing and limited in their social life.
When weighing policy options with regards to the pandemic, it seems that universities have abandoned rigorous evidence appraisal in favor of memetic signaling to political peers, regardless of how the illness itself manifests among its highly vaccinated student body.
Onto this backdrop, the omicron variant appeared in early winter. The extreme contagiousness of this new variant makes uncertain whether any measure will truly “stop the spread.” One reaction to the highly contagious variant (even among the vaccinated) might have been to focus less on extreme measures to tamp down cases, and instead focus on empowering students to take action to avoid severe outcomes based on their individual risk factors and risk tolerance.
Given lower risk of severe outcomes compared to prior variants, particularly among vaccinated young people, the situation on campus could take the shape of a bad respiratory virus season. The way forward could be as simple as: if you’re sick, get tested and stay home. If you’re well, go about your business. If you’re high risk or otherwise worried, discuss a booster or other means of protecting yourself with your health care provider, and consider wearing a properly fitted N95 mask. By messaging confidence in vaccines, a college may weather the surge with outcomes indistinguishable from schools that took more restrictive measures, without the collateral damage to community cohesion, trust in public health or institutional credibility.
But this evenhanded approach bumps up against unfashionable values concerned with civil liberties. And it doesn’t relieve the anxieties of adults who are persuaded less by the efficacy of interventions than by the moral imperative of imposing any restriction deemed virtuous by the chattering class. In fact, on Jan. 7, our state’s flagship academic institution announced that all students, faculty and staff were required to receive a COVID booster shot by Jan. 24. This measure goes beyond the University System of Maryland’s mandate by including off campus students and employees.
After nearly two years of restrictions intended to reduce the toll of this intractable disease, many may dismiss this mandate as one more inevitable imperative. But we — society and institutions of higher learning, in particular — must look critically at the necessity of such a heavy-handed intervention, and carefully evaluate the evidence supporting it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still consider an individual who has received the primary vaccine series to be fully vaccinated. Yet the university employed a new turn of phrase, requiring a booster to be “up-to-date,” indicating the initial vaccines are somehow deficient. Yet abundant evidence indicates that the primary vaccine series continues to prevent severe illness and death — an outcome worth celebrating.
Boosters are available to all, including those who are high risk or otherwise eager to take any measure to avoid infection. Emerging evidence indicates that reduction in infection due to boosters is uncertain and likely short-lived. As the efficacy of boosters in preventing infection is not clear, many are satisfied with their reduced risk of severe disease without additional shots.
Many experts reject the idea that boosting young and healthy individuals is an appropriate strategy at this stage of the pandemic. In September, the FDA’s external vaccine review panel voted 16 to 2 against blanket approval of boosters. The FDA decided internally to ignore these recommendations and approve boosters for all. Amid this process, two senior members of the vaccine review committee resigned. Both contributed to a Lancet opinion piece arguing against universal boosting. Among other points, they argue that unnecessary boosting impedes global vaccine equity, and may broadly reduce vaccine acceptance.
The available vaccines are based on the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. Many members of the campus community recently recovered from COVID, and now have immunity to the currently circulating strains. They will gain no benefit from a booster, meaning the risk, however minuscule, of an adverse event outweighs the benefit. It is widely accepted that myocarditis is an adverse event related to mRNA vaccines administered to young men. While these events are rare and typically mild, some are severe, and even mild cases may require limiting activity for an extended period. One may argue that this risk is justified before the initial vaccine series based on the risk of severe outcomes from COVID infection. However, vaccinated young men required to get yet another dose are being subjected to this risk with no evidence of benefit, particularly if they are recovered from COVID.
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a vaccine developer, recently went on record to say that the benefit of boosting is not worth the risk to the average, healthy young adult male. He advised his own 20-something son against getting a booster.
Students want and deserve a normal, in-person spring semester. However, the university’s will to reassure students, parents, and faculty that the university is taking measures to reduce the burden of the disease on campus must not overpower the will to appraise whether the chosen intervention is effective, necessary, and without harm. The booster mandate does not meet these criteria.
I made the choice to be vaccinated as soon as I was eligible. I strongly encourage all adults to be vaccinated, and to discuss boosters with their physician. I am unlikely to suffer ill effects from a booster, and I may achieve some minor benefit in a temporary delay of infection. I am concerned, however, that the University is engaged in a dishonest exchange with its community by issuing a heavy-handed mandate whose necessity is not sufficiently supported by science. As an alum and a current faculty member, I wish to uphold the credibility of the university by insisting the booster mandate be suspended.
Chrissa Carlson ([email protected]) is a senior faculty specialist at the University of Maryland Extension.