Natural Immunity Recognized, but the Gulag Awaits?

Two Notes on Our Emergent Bio-Surveillance State.

Natural Immunity Being Recognized

The esteemed Dr. Paul Offit, who pushed back on the mandatory vaccination and booster regimen initially proscribed by Fauci for otherwise healthy children, claims he also advocated for the recognition of natural immunity at the highest levels of our government.

Alexandros Marinos @alexandrosM

How was the decision made to ignore immunity from prior infection? In this clip, Paul Offit describes how he and another person advised in favor of accepting natural immunity, while two others voted against it. A🧵 on why that was possibly the worst decision of the pandemic:

Dr. Offit did co-author the 10 February 2022 Washington Post op-ed, “People who have had covid-19 don’t need three vaccine shots.”  The gist, albeit so little so late: “The CDC’s vaccination guidance should acknowledge that past infection provides significant protection against the coronavirus.” (But see also Thomas Harrington’s 10 March 2022 commentary on Dr. Offit). 

Ironically on the same date as Offit’s op-ed, 10 February 2022, this substack published “The Political Persecution of Americans with Natural Immunity.”

We pointed out that natural immunity had always been the gold standard — the question was the personal and social health cost.  For many diseases, the preference for vaccine-induced immunity versus natural immunity was straight-forward.

But the efficacy of natural immunity was never up for serious debate.  For one simple reason:  if you cannot develop natural immunity, you cannot develop vaccine-induced immunity. The vaccine itself is an infection — a version of the pathogen — which provokes your immune system.

In an interview (25 January 2022), Dr. Offit had confirmed largely the same:

If you’ve gotten measles, there is no reason to get a measles vaccine, or mumps or rubella or chickenpox [vaccine]. I mean, you’ve been vaccinated essentially….It is not at all surprising that if you’ve been naturally infected that you will develop high frequencies of memory B and T cells which should protect you against serious illness. And I think that is what the CDC now has shown.

Basic science. But all this was reasonable to presume — and even by other nations established for Covid-19, well before the American CDC started having a change of mindset. And this change of mindset was caused not by “the science,” but the overwhelming failure of the vaccination and booster regimen to protect against Omicron.

Bad Policy, Worse Consequences

So what about all those American citizens and legal residents who lost their jobs? Who were also subjected to harassment and vilification, mockery and outright demonization. Because their natural immunity was not accepted — not respected. They were required to undergo additional medical interventions — the vaccination and booster regimen — to solve a problem which they did not have, and which — as it turned out — these medical interventions could not solve. They refused, wisely. But at considerable personal and professional cost.

We also have American citizens and legal residents with natural immunity who did their best to comply with the vaccination and booster regimen, whether out of a sense of moral responsibility or financial necessity or trust in our government. These individuals put themselves at risk for vaccine complications — in extreme cases, lethal complications. If and when we crunch the numbers, we might find that some of these Americans suffered serious health issues related to vaccine complications. God forbid if any died from vaccine-related complications.

But now our government is slowly coming around to recognizing natural immunity. My remarks made over one month ago still hold:

We must do justice for all those with natural immunity who suffered personal and professional damages. Who were mocked and threatened by US public officials, by the MSM pundits and celebrity pendejos, and by their parasitical New Media hordes. Start with financial compensation, including punitive damages. Start with an apology from those at the highest levels of our government.

Update on the Lack of Progress

Nothing yet in the way of apology or compensation.  Only belated recognition of the obvious: natural immunity should have counted.  Instead, we went on a witch-hunt against the “unvaxxed” — against anyone who for whatever reasons failed to immediately comply with the ever-shifting definition of fully vaccinated.

So we had not only failure at the highest levels of government and public health, but indeed their active participation in the persecution of Americans with natural immunity — our fellow citizens and legal residents who had their livelihoods and reputations destroyed.

One bright spot: I recently discovered the substack H2F Man by Dr. Gary Smith.  He has two excellent posts on this general concern: “New CDC Data MMWR 28JAN22” (3 Feb 2022) and “COVID-19 Vaccination with Booster Required for Wedding Attendance” (10 March 2022). I am not claiming that Dr. Smith endorses my views — I am recommending these posts for people who are interested in exploring more.

The failure to recognize natural immunity, and all that harm that failure has caused, brings us to our next topic: “the gulag awaits.”  

The Gulag Awaits?

So the theologian Douglas Farrow (10 March 2022) warns us. Histrionics? What merit if any does this seemingly irresponsible warning have? Let’s put Farrow’s words back in context, to start:

… in Ottawa, when the public was deemed safe only if Tamara Lich, a Freedom Convoy organizer who had been denied bail, was brought into court wearing ankle cuffs. The judge ordered their removal, but the Canadian equivalent of the Committee on Public Safety had made its point: Resistance is forbidden. Resisters will be rounded up. Their assets will be confiscated. The gulag awaits.

His expressed concern or rather specific example is the Trudeau government invoking martial law against peaceful protestors and children in bouncy castles. (Image source: Reuters).

Nothing says irredeemable domestic terrorists like children in bouncy castles. But levity aside (if it was to our ruling class), during the height of the USA hysteria, we did have both pundits and celebrities calling for the physical as well as social isolation of the “unvaxxed” and “not fully vaccinated.” Something very much like internment camps or gulags. This did not happen.

Virtual Gulags, for Now

But we have created mainstream media and social media gulags and Warsaw-like ghettos. With economic impact. If you have the perceived wrong views on how the USA has handled the Covid-19 pandemic, expect to be driven-off or censored-off of YouTube, Twitter, and rather more. You might also lose the ability to fundraise or transfer money.

You belong to an undifferentiated  mob of conspiracy theorists: as if there were no differences between the three founders and original signers of The Great Barrington Declaration and any three randomly selected members of QAnon. Dissent or question, and you are placed in the demon-box.

So what?

If this were only public hysteria reinforced by corporations seeking profits, Farrow would be guilty of histrionics. But his concerns are what the Canadian and USA governments are doing: how they legally and with force demand both ideological and behavioral conformity. Liberty, suspended indefinitely.

Request For Information

Let’s have a look at some recent events. I will focus on the USA. The Department of Homeland Security’s 07 February 2022 memo on mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) has already received considerable attention.  (Thomas Lifson’s 09 February 2022 remarks still worth your consideration).

What has not received enough attention: the Office of the Surgeon General’s 07 March 2022 RFI on “health misinformation in the digital information environment during the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Writing for RESCUE, Linda Bonvie and Bill Bonvie (12 March 2022) want us to pay more attention:

In a startling "Request for Information" reminiscent of Soviet totalitarianism, the Surgeon General asks the public and big tech to turn in doctors and neighbors for Covid "misinformation." … In a chilling call to informants, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is trying to develop a list of “specific, public actors that are providing misinformation.”

That Meme, Again

Gulags? Soviet totalitarianism? Citizen-spy-informers? We verge on a meme. The Good Citizen (6 March 2022) for the win: “This time it’s the west that’s degrading toward the worst elements of the USSR faster than Russia.”  

(No points for originality on my part, as a Reverse Image Search turns up hundreds of possible sources.  Hat tip to The Good Citizen, and my credit to the original creator). 

But what justification for such language?  The call for the American public to participate in an East-German Stasi-like network of citizen-informants is disconcerting, to be sure. Let’s dig a bit further into the details.

Understanding the Power-Grab, the Science Putsch

In his 07 March 2022 RFI that Linda Bonvie and Bill Bonvie (12 March 2022) call to our attention, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy defines “health misinformation” as “health information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time.” (Emphasis mine).

We need pay attention to the clause “the best available evidence at the time.”  This begs the question. Or rather, questions. Who are your sources for this “best available evidence” and what makes it “best”? How do a handful of unelected government officials preemptively declare the science settled — at least momentarily — for the purpose of determining who is engaged in criminal dissent?

If we had been following the established science and the global data, natural immunity would have long since been recognized.  We would have adopted a public health strategy similar in principle to that advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration: focused protection, rather than a one-size-fits-all vaccination and booster regimen.

What Fauci and the CDC did, as Brian McGlinchey summarizes for us (22 February 2022), was a radical departure from established medical and public health practices.  James Lyons-Weiler, at Popular Rationalism, has too many related posts on the same to cite individually. And for your reading pleasure, the exemplary exposition by Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff  (2 January 2022): “The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health.”

Whose “best available evidence”? “Best” how?

Whose “best available evidence” decided by what criteria?  The “best available evidence” as curated by American Big Pharma?  Judged by criteria which most benefit and protect permanent Washington and Big Pharma? So it seems.

Now, note the second part of that clause: “at that time.”  Of course, the “best available evidence” for decision-making might change — particularly when flawed policies imposed by force are harshly reality-checked, and the damage is such that even our elites fear the repercussions.  

So we simply say “but the science has changed.” The former conspiracies of natural immunity, of the vaccinations not preventing transmission of the virus, of otherwise healthy children not needing vaccinations against Omicron, and of wearing masks being largely ineffective — well, the science has changed. But as for the damages done from lockdowns and mandates because we would not listen to dissent or consider the larger body of evidence: forget about it. We already have — and accept no responsibility, no accountability.

This seems well described as a perverted form of political Calvinism: we the visible saints, we the predestined elect, we the chosen few. We can do no wrong — even if we appear to do wrong. The science might change, but our salvation has been assured and hence our actions remain forever righteous.

(Public Domain. Circa 1562. Etching by Frans Hogenberg. Judgment day. In top right, Angels can be seen gathering the Elect).

But the problem is not the attitude: the problem is the power-grab — the science putsch.  We return now to our theologian Douglass Farrow, who cites another essential source, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD:

The whole zero-covid doctrine was a ruse by which to maintain emergency powers. Which brings us back to the observation of Aaron Kheriaty that the “health and safety” excuse for a perpetual state of exception is one that has been used before, in Nazi Germany.

Gulags, Soviet totalitarianism, and now Nazi Germany? Michelle Rabin, PhD, expressed similar concerns in her post (5 February 2022) “The Era of Big Lies” — for which she suffered a viscous personal attack in the comments. Rabin can speak for herself — and I encourage everyone to read her post.  I did offer a post in support.   

My concern is NOT drawing direct parallels with Germany in the 1930s to 1940s. My concern is what we used to call totalitarian corporatism: and in our case, the unholy union of Government,  Big Pharma, Financial Tech, and the MSM. No checks and balances here. The point made by Michelle Rabin, PhD, should be well-taken: a student of history will know that fascism cannot exist without — or independent of —totalitarian corporatism.

So if we are being offered a choice between Totalitarian Statism (~ USSR), Totalitarian Corporatism (~ Fascist regimes of the 1930s-40s), or the new and improved and combined Great Reset version thereof: well, I still prefer our constitutional republic, with respect for individual rights and liberties.

A Real Problem?

Do the gulags or Warsaw-like ghettoes await?  The virtual gulags and Warsaw-like ghettoes already exist. And in real life, people have lost their jobs, have had their reputations destroyed, and have even been arrested.  Perhaps for engaging in civil disobedience against government overreach. Or, just for dissenting from the then approved Covid-19 narrative: the narrative now no longer supported by “best available evidence” at this time. For some victims of this persecution, just a few months later than “at that time.” Oops! Sacrifices must be made.

We have been alienated from our once inalienable rights.

The conversation between Douglass Farrow  and four others on “Whether There is a Moral Obligation to Disobey the Coercive Mandates” (27 January 2022) is worth reading in full; Farrow’s later “Complacency and Complicity” (10 March 2022), essential reading.  Let me add that turning to a theologian for insight and reasoned arguments is NOT something that comes easy or natural to me.

Disclaimer, Important: my link to or citation of any source does NOT mean that source or person in anyway endorses my content or shares my view. I credit sources so that readers might do their own research — “their own research” a phrase mocked by the MSM, which I find curious as I have taught scholarly research in higher education.

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