Public-health officials in the U.S., unlike their counterparts elsewhere, have steadfastly focused on Covid-19 vaccines in fighting the pandemic, acting as if natural immunity following Covid-19 infection does not exist or is unimportant. The result: misguided policies that led to unnecessary job and educational losses and, quite possibly, excess mortality.
A new, systematic review and meta-analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, published in the British journal The Lancet, confirms what I and many others have long argued: natural immunity following Covid-19 infections is real, and “the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher, than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech).” Protection from past infection against reinfection by pre-Omicron variants was very high (85 percent) and remained high (79 percent) even after 40 weeks. Protection against reinfection was substantially lower for the Omicron BA.1 variant (45 percent) and declined more rapidly over time (by 36 percent at 40 weeks) than protection against earlier variants.
