Why Are Vaccine Mandates Ignoring Recovered Immunity?

Vaccination mandates involving formulations that are still considered investigational under an Emergency Use Authorization are disturbing enough. Western countries decided after World War II that bodily autonomy was a guiding principle in healthcare and coercion of any kind to participate in medical research is unethical. In fact, the allied nations felt so strongly about these principles that we wrote them down in the Nuremberg Code. This code outlines the ethical principles by which all researchers must conduct medical experiments.

In an odd turn of events, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), under a Democrat administration, has decided not to hold corporations to any standard when they require COVID-19 vaccinations for employees. Initially, OSHA ruled that any adverse reactions suffered due to a vaccine mandate would be a recordable injury. Employees would then have access to coverage under Worker’s Compensation. This week, the agency reversed that decision:

DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.

This ruling does not protect employees from being coerced into a vaccine they may not want or need while removing any sanity check for employers to make such a mandate. Because OSHA will not provide this protection, governors and state legislatures need to ensure that employers can be held civilly liable by employees harmed by mandatory vaccination policies. Many states already have laws holding employers harmless if someone catches COVID-19 at work or when patronizing a business.

Protecting them from all liability for mandatory vaccines is absurd. The majority of the population at high risk for severe illness and death from COVID-19 are not generally in the workplace, and 84% of those 65 and older have had at least one dose of vaccine. The NIH is also adding Regeneron to the outpatient treatment regimen, which has proven very effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization. Doctors throughout the nation are also using effective treatment protocols early in the disease.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has identified 435 colleges and universities that will require vaccinations in order for students to attend in-person classes and live on campus. There must be liability attached to these policies. The mandates result from terrible messaging from the health bureaucracy about risk stratification for COVID-19 among age groups, which at this point can only be intentional. So intentional that I would fully support personal liability for CDC Director Rachel Walensky for every child or counselor at a summer camp who suffers heat stroke or passes out and injures themselves as a result of her agency’s ridiculous masking guidelines.

At a minimum, if employers and schools insist on these policies, they need to be amended immediately to include proof of immunity. Verification could consist of a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, a positive antibody test, or the results of a T-detect test. Research is demonstrating that recovered immunity is at least as robust as vaccinated immunity. Even more encouraging, researchers have now found that it may last a lifetime:

Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-19¹.

The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect,” says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Researchers saw this immune response even in those who had mild cases of COVID-19. Many students and employees fall into this category and deserve the right to demonstrate that immunity in place of a mandatory vaccine. Other emerging research is showing that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and receive the vaccine are more likely to suffer severe side effects. Not providing an option for those who are naturally immune is irresponsible and immoral.

If the health agencies follow the science, as they claim, it is beyond the pale that they are not communicating the existence of natural immunity. In fact, they should be encouraging individuals and organizations to accept it. Everyone should wonder why they are not. Nearly 140 million Americans have likely recovered from or been exposed to the COVID-19 virus and had an effective immune response, according to the CDC’s disease burden calculation. It is time to stop the vaccine insanity.