Despite previous COVID infection, Virginia hospital denies terminally ill patient kidney transplant until he's vaccinated



A terminally ill man with a prior COVID-19 infection has been taken off a Virginia hospital's "active" transplant list because he is unvaccinated against the virus, Fox News reported this week.

What are the details?

Shamgar Connors, 42, suffers from Stage 5focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a rare and deadly disease in which scar tissue develops on the small parts of the kidneys that filter waste from the blood. Though at present his scarred and irreparably damaged kidneys are performing well enough for his survival, Connors knows that his disease is terminal and the only ultimate solution is a transplant.

But when it comes time for Connors to receive a transplant, he may not be able to. The husband and father of two was reportedly informed by a doctor at the University of Virginia Hospital recently that he cannot move forward in the transplant process until he gets a COVID-19 vaccine.

What makes things especially frustrating for Connors is the fact that he contracted COVID-19 during the Delta wave last year. That prior infection likely affords him some level of immunity against the disease. But that possibility doesn't factor into UVA Hospital's vaccine requirement.

In a recorded call with Dr. Karen Warburton on Jan. 6, Connors was pressed on whether he would be willing to get the vaccine. When he answered "no," Warburton moved to have him remain on the transplant list but in an "inactive" status — meaning he can't receive a transplant unless something were to change.

UVA denying me a kidney transplant because i refuse to get the vaxx youtu.be

"I just had COVID, so I don't — so why would I get the vaccine?" Connors claimed on the phone, but Warburton didn't budge.

"You may have had Delta, and that may not protect you against the Omicron variant, which is what we're seeing now," the doctor explained. "So, our policy is that in order to have people active on the transplant list and get a transplant, you need to be fully vaccinated."

At one point, Connors claimed that he would "rather die of kidney failure" than get the vaccine.

Warburton assessed that it "may be a crossroads" for Connors as the two briefly debated the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

Connors later told Fox News that he had been active on the transplant list after starting dialysis about two years before. He added that he is not opposed to vaccines, in general, but is wary of the COVID-19 vaccines and their side effects, in particular.

What else?

Connors is the latest in a growing list of sick patients who have been denied organ transplants due to their vaccination status since the start of the pandemic.

Just this week, reports surfaced about a Boston hospital removing a dying patient from its heart transplant list because he is unvaccinated.

Last August, a hospital in Washington state similarly removed multiple patients from its organ wait list over vaccination status. Then in October, the Cleveland Clinic stopped a lifesaving kidney transplant due to a vaccine policy that had gone into effect only days before.

In response to Fox News, a spokesperson for UVA Health refused to confirm whether vaccination is a requirement for transplants but insisted that each candidate is evaluated on a "wide range" of factors.

"Unfortunately, the need for transplants far exceeds the availability of donated organs – at any given time, tens of thousands of Americans are on a transplant waiting list. Because of that shortage, every transplant center carefully evaluates every potential recipient based on a wide range of factors to ensure they are a good candidate for transplant surgery," the spokesperson told the outlet.

Fox News reported that Connors was contacted by Kirk McKenzie, an attorney who is allegedly gathering similar cases for a lawsuit.

New CDC study finds prior COVID infection offered stronger immunity than vaccines during Delta surge



A new study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that prior infection with COVID-19 offered stronger protection than vaccination against reinfection and hospitalization during the Delta variant surge last summer and fall.

What are the details?

The study, which analyzed data from May through November of 2021 in California and New York, was published Wednesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

It found that in California, only 0.5% of unvaccinated individuals with prior infection were diagnosed with a new infection, and only 0.003% (or 378 people out of 1,370,782) were admitted to the hospital.

The figures were lower than those of vaccinated individuals without prior infection, of whom 1.5% were diagnosed with an infection and 0.007% (or 10,737 people out of 15,484,235) were hospitalized.

Similar data was produced in New York during the same time period, although New York did not produce hospitalization data.

The study also showed that a third group of individuals who were both vaccinated against the virus and had a prior infection — sometimes called "hybrid immunity" — fared the best during the Delta surge. And lastly, a fourth group consisting of unvaccinated individuals without prior infection accounted for by far the most infections and hospitalizations.

In short, the data demonstrated that both vaccination and prior infection produced immune protection against the Delta variant.

What else?

Researchers were keen to note that vaccination remains the safest way to protect oneself against health complications resulting from the virus, since infection-derived immunity carries with it some obvious risks.

“A COVID vaccination helps protect by creating an antibody response without the person having to experience severe illness and death,” Benjamin Silk, one of the study's authors and an epidemiologist at the CDC, said during a call with reporters Wednesday, according to Politico. “Vaccination provides safer protection.”

"Vaccines continue to reduce a person's risk of contracting the virus that causes COVID-19 and are highly effective at preventing severe illness," he added.

Researchers also noted that some of the data was collected at a time when vaccine immunity was fading and before booster shots became widely available.

"Importantly, infection-derived protection was greater after the highly transmissible Delta variant became predominant, coinciding with early declining of vaccine-induced immunity in many persons," the study's authors said, noting that further research was needed to determine the efficacy of vaccine boosters.

Anything else?

Still, for the many who have voiced support for naturally derived immunity and argued that individuals with prior infection should not be subject to vaccine mandates, the new research likely serves as vindication.

Some scientists, such as Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of Southern California, believe the study's findings should impact public health policies moving forward.

"No one who cares about public health is ever going to say that it's better to get infected than get vaccinated when we have a safe vaccine," Klausner told NBC News. "But in terms of policy, this supports all the clinical research and other data that suggest that immunity after infection is real, is durable."

Because of that, he said, "policy in the United States should be updated, like in many European countries, to allow for people to go to work, to go to school, if they have evidence of recovery of infection without requiring vaccination."

Horowitz: New study shows more effective immunity from prior infection than in vaccinated among organ transplant recipients



Few people are as immunocompromised and vulnerable to COVID as solid organ transplant recipients (SOTRs). Those are the people whom the medical establishment suggests should get shots and boosters early and often — even if they have to "mix and match" different variations of the shots. However, given the fact that these people are also the most vulnerable to complications from the pathogenic spike protein of the shots, why are doctors not first making sure they don't have natural immunity? A new study demonstrates that it is criminal to assume the risks of vaccination for SOTRs with prior infection.

We already have at least 122 studies attesting to the durability of immunity from prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, many of which clearly show that immunity to be much stronger and longer-lasting than vaccine-mediated immunity. However, a new study from researchers at Ajmera Transplant Centre, University Health Network, in Toronto, Canada, demonstrates that even organ transplant patients have robust T cell immunity from prior infection, much greater than those who are vaccinated.

"Vaccinated SOTRs mounted significantly lower proportions of S-specific polyfunctional CD4 + T-cells after two doses, relative to unvaccinated SOTRs with prior COVID-19," concluded the authors of the study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. "Together, these results suggest that SOTR generate robust T-cell responses following natural infection that correlate with disease severity but generate comparatively lower T-cell responses following mRNA vaccination."

Rather than studying the less meaningful antibody responses, the researchers studied T cell responses in three cohorts at Toronto's University Health Network (UHN) Transplant Centre: SOTRs who had prior infection but were not subsequently vaccinated, SOTRs who were vaccinated 4-6 weeks prior to the study but never had the virus, and a control group of regular non-SOTRs with prior COVID. While the non-immunocompromised naturally immune cohort obviously mounted the greatest T cell response, the study still found that SOTRs with prior immunity had robust antigen-specific helper (CD4) and killer (CD8) T cells. Overall, the researchers found a detectable antigen-specific T-cell response in SOTRs with prior immunity at a 41.4% greater frequency than in the vaccine-only group. Also, most of those in the vaccine cohort received the Moderna shot, which is believed to be more potent than the Pfizer shot.

The findings of this study are a bombshell, because they suggest, at least in the short run, that even the most immunocompromised people with prior infection mount a serious antigen-specific T cell response that, unlike the vaccines, targets the nucleocapsid and membrane of the virus, not just the spike protein. While there is no long-term follow up in this study of SOTRs, it is important to remember that there are endless studies showing long-term and likely lifetime immunity from prior infection in the general healthy population. At the same time, we already have numerous studies and the reality of the current hard data from fully vaccinated countries hit hard with a new spread that the vaccine-mediated immunity completely wears off even for healthy people after six months.

Moreover, studies have already shown that the immunity conveyed by the shots might be particularly short-lived for the immunocompromised. For example, a study from Puerto Rico's Department of Health recently found the shots to be 0% effective in those 85 years and older after 150-200 days after vaccination. A massive Swedish study of half the country's population showed "notable waning among men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities" after about six months.

The results of the SOTR study raise some serious questions:

  1. How can our government continue to ignore the power of natural immunity if it is this potent even in organ transplant recipients?
  2. How can we continue denying organ transplants to those who don't get the shot when some of them already had the virus and the shot itself doesn't work much?
  3. What is our solution to the immunocompromised? The shots barely work and will likely not work at all with the new variants, yet they are most dangerous to those people. They have never even been tested in people with kidney failure, much less an organ transplant. Are they supposed to live in their homes forever and atrophy with no safe and effective solution? Why is the government not studying the idea of using preventives like ivermectin, nitazoxanide, or monoclonal antibodies? A recent study of the general population showed that Regeneron given pre-emptively could work for at least eight months of protection without any of the severe risks that are associated with the failed shots. Our government won't even advise these people to use Betadine nasal spray after being around people.

Just how vociferously is our government working to deny natural immunity? At the other end of the health spectrum from elderly transplant patients are healthy children. As scandalous as it is to risk the shot on healthy kids, it's unfathomable to push the shot on kids who also had prior infection. Already in March, the government estimated that 42% of children 5-17 had prior infection, and that was long before the "Delta wave," which was more transmissible and seemed to infect kids more than the ancestral strain. We all assumed that a solid majority would have been infected by now and were waiting for new data to be published. But finally the CDC has updated its numbers, and you will never guess the new data. Immunity magically slid backward!

CDC finally updated their burden estimates... and they bizarrely find that the percent of age 0 to 17 ever-infected fell from 36.7% through May to just 29.9% through September.\n\nEven more bizarre: they claim a higher % of symptomatic COVID than infection. Literally impossible.pic.twitter.com/B3ujqf5Csw

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) 1636496130

Although they don't have new numbers isolated for 5- to 17-year-olds (excluding really young kids and babies who were generally more isolated), their numbers for the 0-17 cohort have slid backward from 36.7% through May to just 29.9% through September ... after Delta! This makes no sense because the media and our government were panicking about this wave hitting the schools much harder. For those with children in schools, we can attest to that fact that last year barely any kids got the virus, whereas this year more seemed to get it (although still mildly) and, unlike before, even spread it in the classrooms to some degree. There is simply no way that a majority of children are not already immune.

This is yet another example of the government retracting a talking point, data point, or study once our side begins using it.

What will it take for people to wake up and realize we are being lied to?