Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against covid-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.
On September 15th, 2021, Dr. Marty Makary authored an article titled Natural Immunity to Covid Is Powerful. Policymakers Seem Afraid to Say So. It started by saying:
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against covid-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.
These three sentences have an interesting relationship, don’t they?
We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April
I’ll return to them in a bit, but first let’s flashback to February 2021. 450,000 Americans died of COVID in in the pandemic’s first year, overwhelming hospitals and morgues. The worst wave, where over 3,000 Americans died per day, was just receding. The virus was just 1 year-old, and it had given us plenty of reasons to respect it so far.
Not everyone felt that way.
On February 18th, Dr. Markary authored an article titled We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April. He was very confident about this new virus. “Experts should level with the public about the good news,” he said. He said:
Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth…Herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it’s harder for it to spread—and that includes the new strains.
Then in March, he authored an article titled Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial. He said:
Anthony Fauci has been saying that the country needs to vaccinate 70% to 85% of the population to reach herd immunity from Covid-19. But he inexplicably ignores natural immunity. If you account for previous infections, herd immunity is likely close at hand.
In May, Dr. Makary continued his media blitz to announce big news. He had been right. Herd immunity had arrived, and it was time to “stop living in fear”. In an article titled Don’t Buy The Fearmongering: The COVID-19 Threat Is Waning he said “On a clinical level, we simply have not seen significant re-infections at any concerning rate.” “The public-health threat is now defanged”, he added.
In another article titled Risk Of COVID Is Now Very Low — It’s Time To Stop Living In Fear: Doctor he said:
COVID cases are collapsing in front of our eyes…Yet some people want the pandemic to stretch out longer
During an interview on Fox New that month, he dismissed the concerns about variants and said the main priority was to not “scare people”. “People need something to look forward to,” he said. He also had this exchange:
Question: You talked about this a couple of months ago. You said look, we are two months away from herd immunity. Are we there, are we closer, is it ever going to be full realized in your estimation?
Answer: Well unfortunately, we have this perception now that’s being created by some public health leaders that we reach to total eradication. And we’re not going to get to total risk elimination. That is a false goal and quite honestly it’s being used to manipulate the public. We heard today if get to 70% vaccination, then we can see restrictions. That’s dishonest. Most of the country is at herd immunity. Other parts will get there later this month… I call that herd immunity.
I don’t remember anyone serious talking about “total risk elimination” in May 2021, though through this straw man argument, Dr. Makary sought to convince his audience that “public health leaders” were dishonest manipulators out to scare people. In contrast, he was a straight shooter, willing to tell bravely the truth- most of the country is at herd immunity.
In June, Dr. Makary formalized his thoughts in an article called The Power of Natural Immunity, another article that paid homage to the “power” of being infected with a potentially deadly virus. He said:
The news about the U.S. Covid pandemic is even better than you’ve heard… There’s ample scientific evidence that natural immunity is effective and durable, and public-health leaders should pay it heed.
He added:
With more than 8 in 10 adults protected from either contracting or transmitting the virus, it can’t readily propagate by jumping around in the population. In public health, we call that herd immunity, defined broadly on the Johns Hopkins Covid information webpage as “when most of a population is immune.” It’s not eradication, but it’s powerful.
Dr. Makary concluded:
It’s time to stop the fear mongering and level with the public.
So far this year, nearly 2.8 million cases of COVID have been reported in the U.S.
Let’s return to those three sentences from Dr. Makary’s article Natural Immunity to Covid Is Powerful. Policymakers Seem Afraid to Say So:
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against covid-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.
We all know what happened next.
Since February 2021, when Dr. Makary penned We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April, around 700,000 Americans have died of COVID and millions more have been injured by it. It’s not over yet. Unfortunately, those “elected leaders and public health officials” turned out to be right. Natural immunity offers unreliable protection against COVID, and reinfections are hardly rare events. Despite the abundance and “power” of natural immunity, we still do not have herd immunity.
Delta is downgraded to a mild seasonal virus that causes mild common cold-like symptoms.
So, did Dr. Makary adapt when new data proved his scientific hypothesis was incorrect? Not that I’ve seen. I have not seen him acknowledge his bizarre fetishization of the “power of natural immunity” was misplaced. I have not seen him revisit his doomed declarations of herd immunity. I have not seen him retract his unprofessional slurs that “public health leaders” were “dishonest” and trying to “manipulate the public” because they wanted the pandemic to continue.
He’s not alone.
Many doctors sounded exactly like Dr. Makary in 2021. These “free-thinking” doctors also claimed that natural immunity was a “triumph,” that vaccines were a panacea for those who needed them, that variants were nothing to “panic” about, and that kid’s didn’t need the COVID vaccine because the pandemic was ending. They too disparaged anyone who disagreed as having an “addiction to doom and gloom.”
Yet, when the pandemic failed to end, these doctors just barreled on full-steam ahead as if none of that ever happened. Their confident, optimistic proclamations- most of the country is at herd immunity– were made and then instantly forgotten, without a moment’s recognition of error or the slightest expression of regret to those they smeared as “fear mongers.”
In fact, doctors who said the pandemic was winding down in the first half of 2021, devoted the second half of that year not to pausing their COVID commentary and reflecting on their failed forecasts, but rather by doubling down and minimizing the variants that obliterated their pollyannaish predictions. No matter what was happening on the ground, they just kept robotically repeating the exact same things they’d always said. There was always “reassuring data“. It was always time to stop “living in fear“. They were all completely predictable.
- Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who said in March, “We should not be particularly concerned about the variants,” said in July , “I don’t think the Delta variant changes the calculus or the evidence in any fundamental way.” Then in December, he starred in a podcast titled Why No One Should Panic About the Omicron Variant, in which he said “this is not something to panic about.”
- Dr. Monica Gandhi, who gave an interview titled Pandemic Exit Interviews: Stop Panicking About the COVID-19 Variants, Says UCSF’s Monica Gandhi in February, wrote an article titled The Reassuring Data on the Delta Variant in July. Then in December, she gave an interview titled, The Cautious Case for Omicron Optimism Dr. Monica Gandhi Says There’s Reason to Trust Preliminary Reports of Mild Illness.
- Dr. Zubin Damania, who recorded a podcast with Dr. Gandhi called The End of the Pandemic in February, wrote an article titled The Delta Surge May Collapse Faster Than You Think in August. Then, in January 2022, he said the Omicron variant was “Omi-cold, and we generate immunity from being infected by it”.
- Dr. Lucy McBride, who wrote I’ve Been Yearning For An End To The Pandemic. Now That It’s Here, I’m A Little Afraid in March, wrote an article about the Delta variant titled Fear of COVID-19 in Kids Is Getting Ahead of the Data in August, as if waiting for “data” before reacting to a deadly virus is always wise.
Articles from February, July, and December 2021
Like these doctors, Dr. Makary also failed to adapt to new data when the Delta variant arrived, wrecking his declarations of herd immunity. As it ripped through much the country, he just kept robotically repeating the exact same things he’d always said. He gave in interview in June titled Dr. Marty Makary Pans ‘Fear-Mongering’ Over Delta Variant, and in August he said:
If you’re one of the 99%+ of kids that are unvaccinated…those kids don’t need to worry…For most people right now, Delta is downgraded to a mild seasonal virus that causes mild common cold-like symptoms…The vaccines have been perfectly consistent against all of the variants.
Of course, Dr. Makary and these other doctors were wrong about the Delta variant, which caused “record deaths” in many parts of the country and hit children harder than ever before, especially unvaccinated ones.
Predictably, Dr. Makary also failed to adapt to new data when the Omicron variant arrived. As it ripped through much the country, he just kept robotically repeating the exact same things he’d always said. In December, he glorified the Omicron variant as “nature’s vaccine” and in an interview on Fox News titled Omicron Fear Fueling a ‘Second Pandemic of Lunacy’ said:
We’re seeing this massive new wave of fear that is fueling our second pandemic after COVID-19, which is a pandemic of lunacy, which is omicron. Now I call it omi-cold… This new scientific data from the lab explains the epidemiological data and the bedside observation of doctors that this is far more mild… and that’s why I call it omi-cold.
Of course, Dr. Makary and these other doctors were wrong about the Omicron variant, as the articles During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People and Hospitalizations Of Young Children With The Virus Surged During The U.S. Omicron Wave explain.
All that from the doctor who instructed others:
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt.
Public health officials actively propagated misinformation that ruined lives and forever damaged public trust in the medical profession.
Many people adapted to new data and relinquished their optimistic pandemic estimations when immune-evading variants arrived in the summer of 2021. These doctors did not. Minimizing COVID was a pure reflex for them. It was literally all they could do. What more could the virus have done to make them say, “OOPS! I was wrong to have said the pandemic was over“? The answer, of course, is “nothing.”
To my knowledge, just one of these doctors has ever acknowledged error for prematurely declaring the pandemic over. He’s also stopped doing this. Good for him. However, I can’t recall any doctor who said the pandemic ended in spring 2021 who later had the integrity to honestly reckon with the consequences of blasting out that false message in major media outlets for months on end. Million of Americans trusted these highly-credential doctors who spoke with great confidence when they said what we all wanted to hear.
How are these people doing today? Did all they all turn out OK?
Predictably, instead of showing even a hint of concern about the fate of their audience and introspecting for a nanosecond, these doctors keep robotically repeating the exact same things they’ve always said. Despite his inglorious track record, Dr. Makary still fancies himself a brave truth-teller, entitled to sanctimoniously scold those dastardly “public health officials”. In an article from February 2023, ironically titled 10 Myths Told by COVID Experts — And Now Debunked, Dr. Makary spread blatant anti-vaccine falsities and continued to lavish praise on “natural immunity”. He also said this:
Public health officials actively propagated misinformation that ruined lives and forever damaged public trust in the medical profession.
Imagine the utter audacity, shamelessness, and lack of self-awareness it takes for the author of We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April to write that contemptible slur about people who were right about herd immunity 3-years ago. Nonetheless, I won’t disagree with him for saying:
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt.
That’s actually a really good idea.
Articles from February, May, June, and December 2021