TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Republicans opposing the COVID-19 vaccine mandates are turning to a new argument against the US government’s attempts to make them mandatory: natural immunity.
They argue that people who have recovered from the virus have sufficient immunity and antibodies not to need COVID-19 vaccines, and the concept has been invoked by Republicans as a kind of substitute for vaccines.
Florida incorporated natural immunity into state law this week as Republican lawmakers in other parts of the country are pushing similar measures to circumvent vaccine mandates. Lawsuits against the mandates have also started to take the idea into consideration. Conservative federal lawmakers have implored regulators to take it into account when formulating mandates.
Scientists acknowledge that those who have suffered from COVID-19 have some level of immunity, but insist that vaccines offer a more consistent level of protection. Furthermore, natural immunity is far from uniform, making it difficult to enact exemptions applicable to all.
This is because the degree of immunity of survivors of COVID-19 depends on how long ago they were infected, the severity of their symptoms and whether the variant of the virus they had is different from those that circulate now. For example, a person who had a minor case a year ago is very different from a person who had a serious case during the summer, when the delta variant was ravaging the country. It is also difficult to reliably check if someone is protected from future infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in August that people who survived COVID-19 and ignored the recommendation to get vaccinated against the disease were more than twice as likely to be re-infected. . A more recent CDC study, which reviewed information from nearly 190 hospitals in nine states, found that people who were not vaccinated against the virus and who had contracted the disease months before were five times more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who did not have a previous infection.
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Associated Press journalist Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
