Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is inviting journalists who have attacked his stance on the value of natural immunity and opposition to COVID mask mandates and vaccine passports to read the results of a new study.
“To every snot-nosed “journalist” who accosted me in the halls of Congress and spouted Fauci-isms denigrating natural immunity— read the science!” Sen Paul tweeted Monday, citing an article titled “Harvard Epidemiologist Says the Case for COVID Vaccine Passports Was Just Demolished” by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).
“New research found that natural immunity offers exponentially more protection than COVID-19 vaccines,” FEE explains in an article reporting the results of the study. “Put another way, vaccinated individuals were 27 times more likely to get a symptomatic COVID infection than those with natural immunity from COVID.”
According to the study, the combination of both being vaccinated and having had COVID provided even more protection:
“Conclusions This study demonstrated 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. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.”
An article published last Thursday in Scientific American notes that the study is reportedly “the largest real-world observational study so far to compare natural and vaccine-induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2”:
“The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.”
“It’s a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination,” says Charlotte Thålin, a physician and immunology researcher at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute who studies the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. “To my knowledge, it’s the first time [this] has really been shown in the context of COVID-19.”
