Previous COVID infection provides more immunity than jab, new study finds

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Previous COVID infection provides more immunity than jab, new study finds

Israeli researchers questioned why persons who were already infected need to receive the shot.

May 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A group of Israeli researchers conducting a study into immunity against COVID-19 found that protection from the virus is no more robust after injection with Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine than that gained after recovering from previous infection, compelling them to “question the need to vaccinate previously-infected individuals.”

The research team, comprising academics from the Israel Institute of Technology, the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, included the entire population of Israel in its study “to assess the protection efficacy of both prior infection and vaccination in preventing subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection, hospitalization with COVID-19, severe disease, and death due to COVID-19.”

The three-month study – following four sets of groups based on a variation of being vaccinated, unvaccinated, previously infected, and not previously infected – showed that the overall efficacy of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine against infection was 92.8 percent, ranking marginally lower than natural immunity from prior infection, which the study found to be 94.8 percent.

Additionally, previous infection with the virus was found to provide slightly more protection against severe illness upon re-infection than vaccination in those who hadn’t had the virus, with the recovered contingent returning a 96.4 percent efficacy against the 94.4 percent efficacy of the vaccination.

Vaccine efficacy against death from COVID-19 was found to be 93.7 percent in fully vaccinated individuals, “defined as 15 days or more after the second dose.” Conversely, no efficacy calculation was presented for previously infected people as only one person in that group died during the three-month study.

The researchers used data from Israel’s Ministry of Health and Central Bureau of Statistics to gather information on individuals from across the country, making their research the most comprehensive, “large-scale study that has explored the protection due to prior SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the Pfizer vaccine.”

In all, the researchers concluded that both vaccination with the Pfizer jab and prior infection with COVID-19 greatly mitigate “infection against both subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and other COVID-19–related outcomes.” The study awaits peer review.

Israelis have had the opportunity to be vaccinated since a nationwide rollout began in December 2020, with 77 percent of the eligible population (16-year-olds and over with no history of infection with SARS-CoV-2) taking up the offer of inoculation before March 20, 2021.

Within this time, despite Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edenstein’s claim that there will be no “personal sanctions against those who choose not to be vaccinated,” local authorities have strongly coerced uptake of the vaccine, introducing the world’s first “vaccine passport” scheme, dubbed the “Green Pass.”

In late February, Israel began lifting its strict, nationwide lockdown measures, granting “non-essential” businesses to open their doors to the public again, provided those members of the public have received the full regimen of a state-approved vaccine or can prove that they have recovered from the virus. The Green Pass is valid only until the end of the year, after which point the Ministry of Health in Israel recommends individuals reapply for validation. It is unclear whether further “booster” vaccines will be required to qualify. Regardless of holding a Green Pass, citizens are still required to physically distance and wear face masks.

Ilana Rachel Daniel, an Israeli woman living in Jerusalem, related the difficult experience of Israelis struggling under the new regime of vaccine passports. She described the introduction of the scheme as creating a “second-class citizenship, a true medical apartheid that is disallowing healthy, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens from entering their places of culture, if they do not participate in this experiment.”

“There’s a profound governmental and social pressure already to rush into this experiment, and in Israel they don’t even speak about it as if it’s an experiment whereas the rest of the world is fully aware that’s exactly what that is,” Daniel lamented.

Data from the Ministry of Health validate concerns around the rushed nature of vaccinating raised by Daniel. Two researchers, Dr. Hervé Seligmann, a member of the faculty of Medicine Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases at Aix-Marseille University, and engineer Haim Yativ discovered that the mRNA experimental vaccine from Pfizer killed “about 40 times more (elderly) people than the disease itself would have killed” during a five-week vaccination period earlier this year. Among the younger class, these numbers are compounded to death rates at 260 times what the COVID-19 virus would have claimed in the given time frame, their study concluded.

Despite there being no proof that experimental vaccines, like Pfizer’s mRNA treatment, prevent transmission of the virus, Edelstein said upon the release of the Green Pass that “(g)etting vaccinated is a moral duty. It is part of our mutual responsibility.” He went further, declaring, “Whoever does not get vaccinated will be left behind.”