Genuine Facts About Omicron, Delta, Naturally Acquired Immunity, and Vaccines
Given the recent outbreak of the Omicron variant and much still unknown about it, the facts surrounding the Delta variant provide a cautionary tale of how misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 variants provides cover for people who have caused widespread harm and countless deaths.
Government officials and media outlets have often blamed the Delta variant—and are preemptively blaming the Omicron variant—for:
- surging Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths amid rising vaccination rates and booster shots (President Biden & the New York Times).
- Covid-19 outbreaks in schools (the CDC & WebMD).
- inflation (the Washington Post & the New York Times).
- supply chain disruptions (NPR & the Washington Post).
- sagging economic growth (Reuters & Yahoo Finance).
- “a lot of the problems with the economy” (CNN).
While the Delta variant is much more transmissible than earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, its mutations don’t materially compromise the naturally acquired immunity that develops when people catch and recover from Covid-19. Though mass media has led people to believe just the opposite, at least 20 studies conducted throughout the pandemic have found evidence that such immunity is potent and lasting.
In contrast, the current crop of Covid-19 vaccines initially provides strong immunity against Delta and earlier variants, but this appears to start waning a few months after vaccination and drops dramatically by six months. The exact reasons for this are not yet proven, but three major possibilities rooted in empirical facts include the following:
- The vaccines are injected into muscles, which produces little-to-no immunity in the upper respiratory tract where the SARS-CoV-2 virus first infects people.
- The vaccines target only one area of the virus called the “Spike protein,” while naturally acquired immunity targets the entire virus.
- The vaccines trigger an immune reaction to only a few Spike variants, while natural naturally acquired immunity attacks a diverse array of Spike variants.
Data and studies on the Omicron variant are just beginning to pour in, but genetic and immunological research suggests Omicron will be more of the same but with greater transmissibility, a lower death rate, and faster vaccine waning. In other words, it seems ideally suited to mitigation via naturally acquired immunity.
However, the higher transmissibility of Omicron requires much better measures to protect people who are highly vulnerable to C-19. This has been a staggering failure of the authorities responsible for C-19 policies.
Taken together, the thoroughly documented facts below show that the horrors commonly blamed on variants are ultimately due to inept policies and actions. Yet, policymakers and public opinion shapers are failing to learn from their errors and continuing down the same destructive paths.
Ph.D. biostatician Dr. Rodney X. Sturdivant, the Director of the Statistical Consulting Center at Baylor University, critically assessed this research and stated, “People will learn more about Covid immunity and vaccines from this article than if they watched and read everything published by most major media outlets since the outset of the pandemic.”
Mutations & Naturally Acquired Immunity
During the very first week of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, a molecular biology journal reported that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 “does not mutate rapidly for an RNA virus because, unusually for this category, it has a proof-reading function” in its genome. Throughout the pandemic, science journals have repeatedly confirmed this profoundly important fact.
However, the vast bulk of media outlets have never mentioned it, and U.S. government agencies have virtually ignored it except on a website that stores copies of academic papers.
The upshot of this genetic proof-reading mechanism, as explained in the March 2020 paper, is that once a vaccine for C-19 is developed, it “would not need regular updates, unlike seasonal influenza vaccines.” Implicit in this statement is that the vaccine would trigger a broad immune response that mimics naturally acquired immunity. This involves more than just a few types of antibodies but a diverse array of antibodies, B cells, and two types of T-cells called CD4+ and CD8+.
Such is the case with a wide variety of vaccines for diseases like rubella, mumps, measles, polio, smallpox, and yellow fever. Like naturally acquired immunity, these vaccines commonly provide lifelong protection against these diseases.
Short-lived immunity, on the other hand, typically occurs with diseases like the common cold and flu because the viruses that cause them mutate quickly. As explained in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, “all viruses mutate, but influenza remains highly unusual among infectious diseases” because it mutates very rapidly, and thus, “new vaccines are needed almost every year” to protect against it.
Even still, naturally acquired immunity against strains of the flu can be lifelong. For a remarkable example, a study published by the journal Nature in 2008 found that survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic still had immune B-cells that actively produce “highly functional, virus-neutralizing antibodies” that guard against this disease roughly 90 years later. Moreover, scientists were able to extract these B cells from the subjects’ blood and use them to generate monoclonal antibodies, which had “exceptional virus-neutralizing potency and protected mice from lethal infection.”
As expected for a virus with a genetic proofreading mechanism, at least 20 studies have found evidence that naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is potent and durable. These studies span from early in the pandemic all the way up through the period of Delta variant dominance:….
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