Sometime What Our Eyes See IS “The Truth”: COVID-19 RE-infections ARE Rare.
America is in peril because the media, pseudo-experts and nefarious players introduce noise and bias into our democracy. But sometimes what the democracy’s naked eyes see is THE TRUTH that is denied by real “experts”, as a “noble lie”! THE TRUTH in this pandemic is that COVID-19 RE-infections are rare — and likely more rare than vaccine “breakthrough” infections.
As I was thinking about writing this article, I reminded myself of the critical importance of reiterating the following to my readers up front: that the risk-cost of acquiring COVID-19 immunity through natural infection, both in terms of morbidity and mortality, is orders of magnitude greater than the risk-cost of getting vaccinated — ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!
The bottom line is, it is my professional opinion and strong recommendation, that you get vaccinated against COVID-19 ASAP— IF, you are not already immune.
That said, I also know with near certainty, that the vast majority of the 80–100 million Americans who have already had COVID-19 infections are quite robustly immune to re-infection.
In fact, as good as the American COVID-19 vaccines are, with their unprecedented 70–90% efficacy rate, the preponderance of epidemiological evidence, which includes hundreds of thousands of subjects, demonstrate that natural immunity is at least equally protective against subsequent infection.
But despite some very powerful epidemiological studies making this point about the robustness of natural immunity relative to vaccine immunity, Dr. Fauci and the rest of Mr. Biden’s public health team, seem hell bent on ignoring the science. Dr. Fauci and his colleagues seem to prefer the “noble lie” to real public engagement and honest discourse and education about IMMUNITY.
So after much controversy, my colleagues and I were recently able to publish a serious pooled review and meta-analysis of the epidemiological data on acquired natural immunity to COVID-19, and got it through the peer review process.
The paper entitled “Equivalency of Protection From Natural Immunity in COVID-19 Recovered Versus Fully Vaccinated Persons: A Systematic Review and Pooled Analysis” was published yesterday in The Cureus Journal of Medical Science.
While it’s true that Cureus isn’t a glossy Ivory Tower magazine, like NEJM or JAMA, it’s also true that it’s not a biased mouthpiece for America’s public health power structure either. And, knowing the analysis and the peer review process this paper went through, I am confident that the words my co-authors and I put to print in this paper are robustly substantiated by the data we analyzed and presented.
I am certain that if not reason, science and ethics now, then history will vindicate the truth expressed in our concluding remarks in this paper.
The bottom line of this meta-analysis is that acquired natural immunity to COVID-19 is equally, and perhaps even more robustly, protective against subsequent infection, as is “full vaccination”.
But in the end, scientific truths and technological advances are as good and useful in a democratic republic as is the public’s understanding of their truth and utility.
So I decided to ask the fraction of the public, over 20,000 in number, whom I have the privilege of interfacing with on my Twitter platform, what THEY see when it comes to RE-infection after a prior COVID-19 infection.
I generated two Twitter surveys.
Now, I realize that these are not “scientific” polls — they are very crude public opinion polls. Nonetheless, they are NOT worthless — and they do provide a sense of the public’s pulse. Specifically, I wanted to see how the sliver of public opinion I interact with, matches up with our conclusions from the epidemiological data analysis my colleagues and I just published.
As of this writing, well over 2000 people have responded to the survey.
In the first survey, I asked my Twitter followers a YES or NO question: Do you know anyone who’s developed a COVID-19 re-infection after having had a prior infection?
Within 10 hours, 550 people responded.
73.8% said “NO”!
While 26.2% answered “YES”!
So to be clear, with 80–100 million Americans already naturally infected, about 3/4 of the population I interact with on Twitter, are stating that they do NOT know of ANYONE with a RE-infection following a prior infection.
Of course, this finding also means that 1/4 of the population DOES know someone who did have, or thinks they had, a COVID-19 re-infection.
So the question became, what will the same sample population answer about “breakthrough” infections in the “fully vaccinated”.
So, in my second survey, I asked my Twitter followers another YES or NO question: Do you know anyone who’s developed a COVID-19 infection after being fully vaccinated?
Within 10 hours, over 2500 people responded.
13.2% said “NO”!
While 86.8% answered “YES”!
So to be clear, with about 150 million Americans already vaccinated, only about 1 in 10 of the population I interact with on Twitter are stating that they do NOT know anyone with a breakthrough infection following full vaccination — while about 9 in 10, or 90% do!
Of course, this finding does NOT mean that 90% of vaccinated people develop infection. It simply means that most Americans (or at least the sliver of America I’m interacting with on Twitter), including myself, know at least one person who developed a “breakthrough” infection. The same could not be said about RE-infections. In fact, about 80% of my Twitter sample did not know of anyone who had developed a RE-infection.
To be clear, the polls (and the data) are demonstrative that infections do happen in BOTH “previously infected” AND in “fully vaccinated” people. The relevant question to public policy and mandates is: how much, more - or how much, less?
Though I admit that polling, especially informal polling like the one I’ve done here on Twitter, is far from “scientific”. Still I believe that my Twitter poll findings are concordant with the scientific analysis my colleagues and I just published.
The fact that the majority of people surveyed do not know of persons with “RE-infections”, while they do know of persons with vaccine “breakthrough” infections, taken at face value, implies that the latter may be more prevalent than the former.
Certainly, even correcting for confounding factors and biases in the kind of crude polling I’ve done here, given the wide disparity in the two public surveys, it is highly likely that subsequent infection in the two groups (i.e., naturally immune vs. fully vaccinated) is, AT LEAST, equivalent.
Now, I am the first to admit that if I were only depending on my crude public polling to make such an assertion, I’d be a quack. But, my assertion based on crude public polling, is backed up by a few large datasets from credible groups of clinicians and scientists — and a peer-reviewed meta-analysis and review my colleagues and just got through peer-review and published.
So to be clear, both the preponderance of epidemiological evidence on “re-infection” vs. “vaccine breakthrough” AND what the public “sees on the ground” are pointing to the same thing: Acquired natural immunity from a prior infection is at least equivalent, if not superior, protection against subsequent infection, as compared to “full vaccination”.
And, again, I will reiterate that this assertion is not a suggestion that anyone ought to seek natural infection as a pathway to immunity. As I have written before, that would be the equivalent of driving a vehicle drunk. The cost of natural immunity, from a morbidity and mortality standpoint, is simply too high to any individual and to society as a whole.
Nor am I suggesting that anyone who might want to enjoy the minor incremental benefit of booster vaccination (either following infection or following a prior vaccination), should be dissuaded. Go ahead, get “bullet-proof”, if you wish — but maybe wait a full 6 months to year from the time of your natural infection.
But, the serious trouble is that despite what both solid scientific/epidemiological evidence shows and what the public seems to actually be seeing, our “expert class”, led by Dr. Fauci and his colleagues, is laser focused on convincing every American to get vaccinated — irrespective of whether they are already immune or not. Even worse, these “experts” are driving our government to utilize its legal powers to coerce millions of Americans, who stand to gain little to no benefit from a medical treatment, to undergo it anyway — at risk of loss of livelihoods and social opportunities.
What makes it terribly troublesome is that this expert class, led by Dr. Fauci and his colleagues, has hijacked the executive branch of the US government, including the President of the United States himself, away from science/ethics and away from what the voting public is seeing with its own eyes.
But when the elected government of a democratic republic begins to act in discordance with scientific and ethical principles, and especially when it deviates from these principles, while the democracy itself is seeing the reality on the ground with its own eyes, the republic is in severe peril from within. Because no nation’s government has ever survived for long when it violated science, ethics and the will of its own people at one fell swoop!
I am, thus, compelled to write this message to the President of the United States in the public record:
Mr. Biden, be very specific and urgent in relaxing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on Americans who are COVID-recovered and already immune — there are millions of them, whom your rigid mandate is converting into a “silent, frustrated and angry majority”. For if you do not, you will very likely irreparably break the American democracy and abrogate the word “United” from the U.S.A. past the point of no return — and worse than your predecessor. This, cannot be, Mr. President!
We live in a complex world and in nuanced times. But still, there are Truths that are real and visible to the naked eye of the public. When those Truths are also in plain scientific and ethical view, but are ignored by experts and elected government officials, irreparable harm is done to citizens and to the very foundation of civil democratic society.
I write here, in defense of the United States.
Hooman Noorchashm MD, PhD,
Fall 2021.
