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Scientific/Medical Results on

Natural Immunity After Covid-19 Recovery



Experts Inform:

Natural immunity is “as good or better” than vaccination


  • In June '21, The Hill article “The ill-advised push to vaccinate the young”,
    co-authored by Harvard MD Martin Kulldorff and Stanford MD Jay Bhattacharya, cites studies included on this site as key examples that “evidence about protective immunity after natural infection is at least as good as from the vaccines. Hence, it makes no sense to require vaccines for recovered patients. For them, it simply adds a risk, however small, without any benefit." The article also advises against vaccine mandates for younger adults and children based on their extremely low mortality risk, the already observed problems with blood clots and inflammation of the heart muscle from vaccines, and because "we will not know enough about rare but serious adverse reactions until a few years after vaccine approval". As noted at the bottom of the article, Dr. Kulldorff is an expert in epidemiology and post-market vaccine safety surveillance at Harvard, and Dr. Bhattacharya is an expert in public health policy at Stanford.


  • The Sep '21 Washington Post article, “Natural immunity to covid is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so”
    by Marty Makary, MD at Johns Hopkins and Editor-in-Chief of Medpage Today, includes key results from medical studies on this site as examples that “the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against covid-19” is being “rapidly debunked by science”, and that instead “emerging science suggests that natural immunity is as good or better than vaccine-induced immunity”. The article further states “If we had asked Americans who were already protected by natural immunity to step aside in the vaccine line, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. This is not just in hindsight…; many of us were vehemently arguing and writing at the time for such a rationing strategy.”


  • The Oct '21 International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists Declaration II,
    lists studies described on this site plus additional studies as supporting evidence that (1) “natural immunity is the most protective and longest-lasting solution against the development of Covid-19 disease and its more serious outcomes”, (2) “naturally immune persons are at the lowest risk of transmission”, and (3) “natural immunity provides the best source of herd immunity, a condition necessary for eradicating the Covid virus”. This Declaration is signed by medical experts with a wide range of expertise including many who have served in leadership roles such as US HHS senior Covid Pandemic Advisor, Chief of Critical Care Service at the U. of Wisconsin, Chief Medical Advisor of Emergency Medicine in Norway, architect of the mRNA vaccine platform, molecular biologist and coronavirus expert in Belgium, chief of internal medicine at Baylor Univ. Medical Center, frontline doctor at the highly successful Urgent Care Covid Clinic in Imperial Valley, Calif., and Sr. Ebola Program Manager for the Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization (GAVI).


  • In the Oct '21 Uncommon Knowledge interview, What Happened: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on 19 Months of COVID,
    Stanford MD and public health policy expert Bhattacharya explains herd immunity, the role of natural immunity and vaccination, and misinformation about public health strategies and their impacts.


  • The Dec '21 Bhakdi & Burkhardt summary, "On COVID vaccines: why they cannot work...",
    by microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and pathologist Arne Burkhardt, MD, explains that natural immunity includes two types of antibodies: (1) "secretory IgA" immune cells which are located underneath the mucous membranes that line the respiratory tract, ready to meet air-borne viruses, and (2) "IgG" and "circulating IgA" antibodies that travel in the bloodstream and protect the internal organs. The vaccines injected into the muscle "will only induce IgG and circulating IgA." They further explain that a natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 "will in most individuals remain localized to the respiratory tract" and that the antibodies produced by the vaccines "cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes" from the infection, leading to the "breakthrough infections" that have been widely reported.

    Dr. Bhakdi chaired the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the Univ. of Mainz in Germany for 22 years; Dr. Burkhardt headed the Reutlingen Institute of Pathology for 18 years.