Natural immunity is better in every possible way.

Vaccine enthusiasts are utterly obsessed with titers.

No, not that kind!

But one can be mistaken. The vaccine enthusiasts certainly pursue the antibody titer argument with a single-minded obsession rarely seen outside of juvenile males.

Antibody Titers

Antibody titers is a ratio that measures the level of concentration of antibodies in the blood. The smaller the ratio, the higher the antibodies. So a ratio of 1:20 > 1:10, say.

Why are the vaccine enthusiasts so obsessed with them?

Because they are the best predictor of long life in a cold, dark world. No, but seriously, the immune system is incredibly complex and antibodies are a nice, easy to grasp metric. More importantly to the vaccine enthusiasts, antibodies are extremely high in the vaccinated.

This is the point where the obsession occurs. If someone has previously caught the virus, a rational person would note that people who have been previously infected have a (much) higher level of immunity than the vaccinated. Thus, forcing strict, dystopian rules on this person makes no sense whatsoever unless the rules also apply to the less protected vaccinated individual. No, not good enough, say the enthusiasts. The argument is that if this person gets vaccinated as well, then they will have an even higher level of protection!

These is little evidence to substantiate this as far as I can tell, but the argument is nonsense in any case. Having natural immunity means, even with a hypothetical higher level of protection, there are less benefits and the same costs (or more…) to getting vaccinated, which would swing the pendulum against any reasonable argument to get vaccinated. Nor do the vaccinated apply their argument equally.

People with natural immunity could easily turn around and say “yes, my friend, you are vaccinated and the vaccine gives you some level of protection against catching the virus, but if you truly want an even higher level of protection then you should acquire natural immunity”. They could then say that, “side effects from getting natural immunity are very rare, you’ll be better protected against severe infection and death”. It might seem like an absurd argument to a vaccine enthusiast, but it is the exact same argument they are making against us, and it is factually true that natural immunity is better.

Here’s my argument:

Most people are aware of the studies out of Israel that show concretely that natural immunity provides stronger protection than the vaccines. A retrospective observational cohort study by Gazit, et alii found a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increase in risk of breakthrough infection compared to natural immunity for any infection that occurred in January and February 2021. More astoundingly, when adjusting for comorbidites, this increased to a 27.02-fold risk (95% CI, 12.7 to 57.5) of having a vaccine breakthrough compared to natural immunity.

For cases that occurred earlier in the pandemic, id est, from the beginning to December 2020, there was a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk from vaccines, and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) risk from symptomatic infection. The study showed that natural immunity is better and (much) longer lasting than vaccination.

This, of course, is the seminal work for those who argue that natural immunity is better. But it is far from the only work. A study of 43,044 previously infected individuals out of Qatar were follow for four months, only 129 had evidence of a positive test during that time, and reinfections were less severe than primary infections, only one was severe, two were moderate, and none were fatal.

Almost every study on natural immunity, in fact, finds that it offers protection that is the very least as strong as vaccination with the added benefit of being much stronger against severe cases and deaths.

But these studies do not find their way into the media. Instead, you get studies funded by the Center for Disease Control using authors that are deeply in the pocket of Big Pharmaceutical companies, like this one.

Yes, I am refering to the study that claims vaccination is five times better than natural immunity. One only has to look at the press release to see this study is full of shit:

Or the author declarations:

The only advantage of this study is it shows how ridiculous test negative study designs are. Basically, they looked at the proportion of people that tested positive for the virus from vaccinated groups and previously positive unvaccinated groups. There were 324 cases among the hospitalized vaccinated group, and 89 from the hospitalized unvaccinated group. But because the unvaccinated group were testing positive for the virus at a higher rate, 8.7% to 5.1% vaccinated, they concluded that vaccinations are better. After some behind the scenes data manipulation, they concluded they were in fact, vaccinations were five times better.

There are, of course, a myriad of problems here including the fact that the assumptions of test negative designs cannot be upheld. But more obviously, people with natural immunity are (obviously) less likely to even wind up in the hospital for the virus in the first place, so the ones that do are more likely to test positive. I don’t even want to go into all of the problems here, it has been thoroughly debunked. My favorite quote from this article is courtesy of Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, “I felt I was no longer reading a scientific paper but a chapter out of Alice in Wonderland”. We seem to have been peering through the looking glass for at least two years now.

But the titers!

Yes, vaccination offers more antibodies, but it clearly does not do better than natural immunity. Why? Well, there are a few reasons.

Antibodies are not the be all end all of protection against virus; much more important are Memory B cells, which are not anywhere near as good in vaccinated individuals. While vaccinated and those with natural immunity have similar levels of Memory B cells, the vaccinated cells are inferior. One study concluded that these cells stop adapting after about five months. Other studies suggest two months. Whereas, Memory B cells in those with natural immunity not only continue to adapt but they actually become more abundant after six months than one month after infection.

Not only that but the initial titer advantage of the vaccinated individuals quickly deteriorates to basically nothing. While studies have found antibodies do not decrease after up to four months after infection, it would be fair to say they may decrease but at a slow rate. Vaccinated antibodies, on the other hand, decrease rapidly. Tell me, what is a higher antibody response if the antibodies decrease at 40% per month? Do the vaccine enthusiasts even understand how unlikely it is for them to catch the virus before all their precious antibodies are thrown into the void? Not likely.

Where is the vaccine advantage exactly? Naturally immune T-cells have advantages that vaccinated T-cells do not, and they elicit a stronger response to the virus. Plus, natural immunity lasts at least six months—oops, a year— oops, a year and a half to two years… you know what, we actually do not know. But before the pro-vaccine propaganda ramped up, it looked like it could last a lifetime for many people. So tell me, how is your vaccine better than natural immunity again?