Senator Rand Paul’s (R.-Ky) question was simple:
“Are you a doctor—a medical doctor?” asked Paul, a licensed medical doctor, at a hearing on Sept. 30.
“I have worked over thirty years on health policy,” answered Xavier Becerra, who is secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“You’re not a medical doctor. Do you have a science degree? And yet you travel the country calling people ‘flat earthers’ who have had COVID, looked at studies of millions of people, and made their own personal decision that the immunity they naturally acquired is sufficient.”
Paul was responding to Becerra’s claim, made during a Sept. 21 online forum, that “because some flat-earthers—especially those in places of influence—choose to peddle fiction, we’re losing more loved ones today than we were a few months ago.”
Becerra had also asserted that “the harm caused by those who lack confidence in and denigrate the vaccine cannot be overstated.”
“But you presume somehow to tell over 100 million Americans who’ve survived COVID that we have no right to determine our own care?” Paul continued. “You alone are on high, and you’ve made these decisions—a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree?”
Pfizer Scientists
While Becerra did not clearly answer Paul’s questions about natural immunity, others have stepped into the breach left by public health authorities.
On Oct. 4, a Project Veritas exposé revealed that multiple scientists at the COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer believe natural immunity is superior to the immunity conferred by their own product.
“When somebody is naturally immune, like, they got COVID they probably have, like, not better, but more antibodies against the virus,” said Nick Karl, a Pfizer biochemist.
“Because what the vaccine is—is, like I said, that protein—that’s just on the outside,” Karl continued, referring to the spike protein on the surface of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine replicates with the aim of inducing immunity.
“So it’s just one antibody against one specific part of the virus. When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against, like, multiple pieces of virus—and not only just like the outside portion, like the inside portion, the actual virus,” Karl added.
“So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the vaccination.”
Chris Croce, a senior associate scientist at Pfizer, told a Veritas journalist that natural immunity left people “protected most likely for longer [than vaccination] since there was a natural response.”
“If you have [COVID-19] antibodies built up, like, you should be able to prove that you have those built up,” said Rahul Khandke, another Pfizer scientist.
Yet media coverage of natural immunity sometimes seems designed to call its very existence into question.
Covering a district court judge’s decision to uphold the University of California’s vaccine mandate, Reuters placed the words “natural immunity” in scare quotes.
