Media Roundup, 9/26/21
My lawsuit against the University of California challenging their vaccine mandate continues to received media attention. Here’s a brief roundup of some of the recent coverage.
My KFI Radio interview last week (segment goes from minute 3 to 13) on natural immunity and my challenge to the UC vaccine mandate, with @GaryandShannon on @KFIAM640 & @iHeartRadio
My TV interview on The Wide Angle with Brendon Fallon on natural immunity and Covid statistics, which I sent out on Wednesday—including a link here as well:
Student reporter Daniel Nuccio over at The College Fix has written a terrific piece making the case for allowing natural immunity COVID exemptions on college campuses. After describing my lawsuit challenging the UC’s vaccine mandate, he provides some historical perspective, highlighting that natural immunity is part of immunology 101, so its relevance for Covid should not surprise us:
Why universities have disregarded the relevance of natural immunity, however, remains something of a true medical mystery.
If the idea of acquiring immunity to a disease following infection were some novel concept or there was mounting evidence to suggest this did not occur with COVID-19, such nonchalant dismissal of naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 might be understandable or even warranted. Yet, in reality, to suggest such novelty or disconfirming evidence would be a denial of both history and science.
Well before physicians had an even rudimentary concept of what an antibody was or any real knowledge of the immune system, there was some basic understanding that individuals who survived certain illnesses were unlikely to suffer those illnesses a second time.
Coupled with the idea that one could achieve this end through less risky means such as inoculation with a small quantity or attenuated form of a disease-causing agent (or a similar but less virulent disease) this understanding is what gave rise to the practice of variolation and later vaccination. This is why eighteenth century British aristocrats exposed their children to small amounts of pus from smallpox lesions. This is why Edward Jenner began giving friends and family cowpox before taking the practice global. This is why parents have long been able to care for children sick with childhood diseases they themselves experienced decades earlier with little worry of falling ill with the same illnesses as an adult.
Of course this principle does not hold true for every infectious disease. But mounting evidence does suggest it likely holds true for COVID, at least for some seemingly extended period.
After summarizing some of the evidence regarding natural immunity in Covid, he writes, rather perceptively, on the motivations of institutional administrators pushing for mandates:
A more plausible scenario is that many are shaping policy around the counsel of their lawyers, accountants, and PR departments. By embracing the edicts of unchecked executives, unelected public health officials, and a moral zeitgeist that can be summed up with the maxim “vaccinated good, unvaccinated bad,” they avoid an array of non-medical risks far more effectively than if they independently attempted to develop their own science-based policies.
By following executive mandates, CDC guidance, and that one simple maxim that can be bleated in the fields of mass-media for hours on end, universities can respond to any vaccine mandate objection by saying they are “following The Science,” even while completely ignoring science.
You can read the entire piece here.