Wisconsin Republican senator suggests ‘natural immunity’ might work better than vaccines

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has suggested that natural immunity might be more effective against Covid-19 than a vaccine.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Mr Johnson, who was infected with Covid-19, said he had been hearing from people in business and in the military that they did not want to be mandated to take a vaccine.

“The other thing that I’m not happy with the health agencies is that they completely ignore the benefit of natural immunity from previous infections,” Mr Johnson told The Independent. “They’re simply not acknowledging it even though more and more data’s coming in that if anything, natural infection is, if anything, quite more effective than the vaccine.”

There is almost no evidence suggesting this. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study of previously infected people in Kentucky that found that unvaccinated people were twice as likely to get reinfected with Covid-19 than those who were vaccinated.

Mr Johnson has previously questioned why the federal government was pushing to vaccinate as many people as possible with a shot that wasn’t fully approved. The comments led Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to push back in April.

“There’s a pretty good reason. We have 567,000 people who’ve died so far in this country from this disease. That is a really, really good reason to get people vaccinated with a vaccine that you’ve shown is highly efficacious and quite safe,” Fauci said.

Mr Johnson’s comments come as the Pentagon has announced it will require members of the US armed forces to have a Covid vaccine.