Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was left speechless in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, after U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, explained the concept of natural immunity to Becerra.
Paul, a physician who tested positive for the coronavirus in March 2020, has been a vocal proponent of the benefits of natural immunity that come from surviving an infection.
“Mr. Becerra, are you familiar with an Israeli study that had 2.5 million patients and found that the vaccinated group was seven times more likely to get infected with Covid than the people who had gotten Covid naturally?” Paul asked.
“Senator, I’ll have to get back to you on that one, I’m not familiar with that study,” Becerra replied.
“Well, you think you’d might want to be if you are going to travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including the NBA star Jonathan Isaac who have had Covid, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million people and say, ‘you know what? It looks like my immunity is as good as the vaccine or not, in a free country maybe I ought to be able to make that decision’ and instead, you have chosen to travel the country and calling people like Jonathan Isaac and others, myself included, ‘flat earthers.’”
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The study Paul was referring to, published on medRxiv.org, covered more than 800,000 people split into three groups and shows that fully vaccinated individuals may be at greater risk of COVID than those unvaccinated.
According to the massive study, people who have taken both doses of the Pfizer jab are 13 times more likely to have a breakthrough infection and are even at a vastly greater risk for Covid-19 hospitalizations.
Vaccinated individuals were found to have 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease.
For most viruses, it is generally the scientific consensus that natural infection provides a better and more robust immunity than vaccines are able to.
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis also reported last month that 11 months after a mild infection immune cells were still capable of producing protective antibodies. The authors concluded that prior Covid infection induces a “robust” and “long-lived humoral immune response,” leading some scientists to suggest that natural immunity is probably lifelong.
Another recent study found that the current vaccines do next to nothing to help the body’s CD8 T-cells, which is the key to long-term immunity.
Israel National News previously reported that those who already had the virus at some point throughout the past year were 7 times more immune to Israel’s recent outbreak than those who have been fully vaccinated.
Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID-19, with 80% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now recording one of the world’s highest infection rates, and Americans aren’t allowed to travel there.
More than half of the cases in Israel, and over 60% of the hospitalizations for severe COVID cases are in fully vaccinated people.
