Ian Patrick, FISM News
With the federal government ramping up vaccine mandates to inoculate the remaining 25% of American adults, the question of protection by natural immunity has begun to rise to the forefront once again. The question being: if someone had COVID-19 and developed the necessary antibodies from it, would they also need a vaccine on top of that?
Examples of natural immunity winning over vaccine mandates have been documented in the past. In August, a professor for George Mason University won a vaccine mandate exemption using natural immunity as a valid reason not to receive a jab. However, Biden’s new sweeping vaccine mandate is causing health officials to ask the question again.
In fact, NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was prompted by CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta to answer that exact query. In an interview segment with Anderson Cooper, Gupta asked Fauci about an Israeli study which says that people who have natural immunity to COVID-19 are 13 times less likely to be reinfected by the Delta variant than those who had received a two-dose shot.
Gupta asked whether or not there is justification in having someone with natural immunity receive the shot as well. Fauci responded by saying “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” and further suggested that extra research was needed on the “durability” of natural immunity.
FISM News previously reported on the Israeli study, in which the conclusion read: “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.”
The study also says those with natural immunity and those who were “given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.”