The White House’s Covid Czar, Dr. Ashish Jha, predicts that Americans will have to deal with Covid by regularly taking vaccines for the indefinite future. Watch:
“One of the things that we are seeing now, Dr. Jha, is people being infected for a second, third, in some cases fourth time,” CNN’s John Berman said. “As we are two plus years into this pandemic, what are you learning about these repeat infections in terms of what it means for immunity and also the severity of these infections?”
“Yeah, it’s a really good question,” Dr. Jha said. “First and foremost, I think we can now dispense with the misinformation that if you get infected once, you have immunity for life. You know, a lot of people have argued that and we have always said that was not the case.”
“The second thing we’re learning is that this virus is evolving,” he added. “The virus is evolving relatively quickly, trying to escape our immunity, but when people do get that breakthrough infection after vaccines, or they get that reinfection, generally it is less severe and that’s obviously a very, very good thing. But we’ve got to keep working on building up the wall of immunity against this virus.”
“‘But what does that mean? Does that mean we are going to be getting shots every six months? My wife just got her fourth shot, right, she had her two initial shots plus a booster, plus a booster. Are we talking two shots a year?’ Berman asked.
“Right now — look, here is where we are,” Dr. Jha responded. “Right now, we are going to have to update our vaccines in the fall and winter because of what we have out there. I do believe that right now people who are 50 and above should go out and get that second booster because we have so much infections. And in the short run, yeah, like, we have had to boost people about every six months.”
“Over the long run, I am confident we will develop more durable vaccines, the virus will also settle down,” he said. “And so my hope is over the long run, this comes down to maybe a once a year shot, but right now we’re having to boost people a little bit more frequently because of how quickly the virus has continued to evolve.”
First of all, Dr. Jha has been proven wrong in his assertion about Covid natural immunity. Dr. Marty Makary, spearheading a team at Johns Hopkins to do the work that the CDC and NIH refuse to do, showed that 99% of unvaccinated people known to have Covid infections had robust “natural immunity” that did not diminish for at least 650 days.
Most importantly of all, this is clear indisputable evidence that natural immunity is far more durable than vaccinated immunity: The Covid protection lasted for 650 days with no noticeable decline.
A CDC report in January showed that vaccination was only “safest” if it was boosted by natural immunity from a prior infection. Natural immunity was the most important indicator of positive health outcomes, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Furthermore, the vaccines do not stop the spread. The current Covid “hot spots” are among the most vaccinated in the country.
It should come as a surprise to no one that these hot spot states in the United States also happen to be among the last to lift their mask mandate orders. In California, there are cities that are reinstating mask mandates, despite five Covid waves and the absence of evidence that they work. Philadelphia schools are bringing back mask mandates indefinitely, and are promptly being sued over it.
And on Thursday, a CDC panel recommended that 5-11 year olds receive “boosters” for Covid-19. A recent study showed that the vaccines had just 12 percent effectiveness for that age group, but has known serious side effects.
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Current Founder, CEO and Chief Editor of Becker News. Former Writer & Associate Producer at Fox News for #1 top-rated prime-time cable news show. Former Director of Viral Media and Senior Managing Editor for award-winning startup website IJReview, which grew to a readership of 20-30 million Americans a month. Led editorial and social media team that was #1 ranked news & politics publisher on Facebook for story engagement. Writer whose thousands of digital articles have been read by over 100 million unique users.