Facebook Publishes Pfizer Ad with Clear Misinformation on Natural Immunity

Time to give Pfizer a taste of its own medicine.

According to Pfizer’s Facebook ad, published Oct 20, 2022,

“Getting #COVID19 does not make a person immune to the virus that causes COVID-19... so don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!

Once a person has had COVID-19, the body creates antibodies to protect itself from infection, but the duration and strength of those antibodies can vary greatly from person to person. That’s why getting vaccinated is so important.

Scientist Darrion Nguyen of Lab Shenanigans breaks down COVID-19 immunity and explains how antibodies really work. Watch now!

The idea here is to cite variation in antibody response to sow the seeds of doubt on whether a SARS-CoV-2 infection renders immunity.

Last I knew, there is variation in antibody responses in the vaccinated, as well, right?

Further, as outlined in IPAK-EDU Information Sheet #1, antibodies are not the final word on immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Memory t-cells matter more.

Nevertheless, here’s an excerpt from the misleading Pfizer ad video:

 "A study from January to September 2021 conducted in the U.S. in patients hospitalized with Covid-19-like illness showed that unvaccinated individuals with a history of natural Covid-19 infection had a greater chance of getting Covid-19 compared to individuals who were vaccinated." 

Given the risk of vaccination, this “scientist” from “Lab Shenanigans” is spreading dangerously misleading misinformation. If you’re on Facebook, consider reporting the video as misinformation under the health category.

Dorrian here is citing a single CDC study, and he is “cherry picking” in a big way. He is not being forthright about the fact that the balance of the scientific literature shows that natural immunity is superior.

Our friend Jeremey Hammond Fact-Checked-The-Fact-Checkers (FCTFC) in November 2021 on this.

“The CDC has since published a second study looking at vaccination status of hospitalized patients that it is citing to support its claim that vaccines confer superior immunity. Fundamental problems with that study have been elucidated by epidemiologist and infectious disease expert Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who is also the senior scientific director of the Brownstone Institute. As Kulldorff explains, the CDC study does not answer the question of whether recovery from infection or vaccination is more effective at reducing the risk of subsequently getting COVID-19. Instead, the question it answers is “whether vaccination or Covid recovery is more related to Covid hospitalization or if it is more related to other respiratory type hospitalizations.”

Logically, one cannot draw conclusions about the effectiveness of natural versus vaccine-induced immunity based on a study that excluded everyone whose immunity protected them from being hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms and testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The CDC study was also specifically designed to look only at short-term immunity and to avoid any measurement of the effects of waning vaccine-induced immunity. (The CDC authors are quite candid about this, directly comparing their decision to limit time since vaccination to 180 days with the Israeli study that looked at vaccine effectiveness after six months.)

As one of the self-designated Checkers of the Fact Checkers, I’m rating this one: