Then and Now: Dr. Fauci Changed His Tune on Natural Immunity

CLAY: I was just telling Buck off the air, there’s a lot of shows that get nervous when they talk about things that go against the prevailing consensus media opinion. And what we’re doing is we’re looking at the data and saying, “We were told that once the vaccinations started…” Fauci himself said, “Hey, once we get to 50%, we’ll never see surges again,” and here we are sitting at 76%, I think is the most recent data, of people 18 and up.

It’s 74% of people 12 and up, and we are still seeing record numbers in states all over the country of covid cases. What’s going on? And a big part of this is the shifting of goalposts, the changing of stories, and my wife actually suggested this. She said, “Hey, you know what?

“I remember a while back when Dr. Fauci said that natural immunity was likely to be the pathway out of covid and that people who got covid and recovered from it were very likely to be fine.” I had the crew here… I said, “You know what? I kind of vaguely remember that too.” I had the crew here go back and look into the mists of covid history.

We know Dr. Fauci has basically said everything. This goes all the way back to March the 26th, 2020, okay? So March of last year, Dr. Fauci was asked on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, “Do we know yet if getting coronavirus and surviving it means you’re immune to the disease?” This was a question that was being asked very early on.

“What happens with natural immunity?” Here was Dr. Fauci’s answer in March of 2020, and then I want to play you very much of the same question that he was recently asked on CNN, and let’s discuss the differences. First, this is The Daily Show on Comedy Central, as I said, March of 2020.

FAUCI: We don’t know that for 100% certain ’cause we haven’t done the study to see rechallenges, whether they’ve been protected. But I feel really confident that if this virus acts like every other virus that we know, once you get infected, get better, clear the virus, that you’ll have immunity that will protect you against reinfection. So it’s never a hundred percent, but I’d be willing to bet anything that people who recover are really protected against reinfection.

CLAY: All right. That’s Fauci. He said, “I’d be willing to bet anything” that people who are infected “are really protected against reinfection.” That was Dr. Fauci in March of 2020. Now, I want you to listen to what he told Sanjay Gupta last week on CNN when Sanjay Gupta pointed out, “Hey, wait a minute. Israeli data says people who are naturally infected have 27 times the protection rate — according to that Israeli data — as people who have vaccinated immunity.”

Here is what Dr. Fauci said just last week. I want you to consider the difference here and ask, why is he telling a fundamentally different story now?

GUPTA: There was a study that came out of Israel about natural immunity and basically the headline was that natural immunity provides a lot of protection, even better than the vaccines alone. What are people to make of that? So as we talk about vaccine mandates, there are… I get calls all the time; people say, “I’ve already had covid, I’m protected, and now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine?” How do you make the case for them?

FAUCI: You know, that’s a really good point, Sanjay. I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that. That’s something that we’re gonna have to discuss regarding the durability of the response. The one thing the paper from Israel didn’t tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what’s the durability compared to the durability of the vaccine?

So it is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected. But you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time. So I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said.

BUCK: I can translate this, Clay. I speak Fauci. Can we get into this for a second here? What would it look like, what would it mean if after this whole vaccination push that we’ve had, it came out and became clear that they ignored, as they have, natural immunity the whole time, all under the premise that, “Well, of course the vaccine is better than natural immunity!” That’s what they were saying in the early days.

Ninety-five percent protection. “We don’t know. We can’t tell you about the natural immunity.” But the vaccine immunity, which also — I want to be that guy, Clay, but there’s tens of billions of dollars at stake here for certain very powerful interests. I don’t say that’s everything. I do think that if Big Pharma could cure this tomorrow, as long as they got tens of billions of dollars, I think they’d be willing to do it.

But I see here Fauci doing what he always does, which is he tailors the message. I know he’s at NIAD, which is part of the NIH. Everybody thinks he’s at CDC. But he tailors the federal health bureaucracy message so that it will not upset the sensibilities of Democrat Biden voters. He changes based upon, “What do I need to say at this point ’cause I don’t want to upset the CNN audience.” And, by the way, this was all Clay had recollection — actually it was Mrs. Clay who remembered.

CLAY: Laura Travis was thinking about it. And think about this, Buck. He said in March of 2020 that he would bet anything that natural immunity was long lasting. That was his actual words: “I’d bet anything.” As a gambling man, “I’d bet anything” means you’re pretty confidence in the side that you are taking, and now he has pivoted. Nineteen months later he says, first of all, I don’t know the answer to this question which. By the way, you had 19 months to figure out the answer. That’s a pretty glaring flaw in the first place.

BUCK: And when you look at this also, his fallback became, oh, but we don’t know how long… Okay, natural immunity, the Israel data shows there’s good protection. We don’t know —

CLAY: Seven hundred thousand people they studied, by the way.

BUCK: We don’t know how long that lasts, though, is what he says.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Well, “isn’t that ironic, don’t you think”?

CLAY: Yes. (laughing)

BUCK: A little nineties reference. We miss the nineties, Clay and I.

CLAY: Alanis Morissette is definitely nodding along.

BUCK: Indeed. Because they obviously didn’t know how long the vaccine immunity lasted, Clay, and that didn’t stop them. They obviously had no idea.

CLAY: And what’s crazy is, we now know that the vaccine doesn’t last very long. That’s why he’s advocating for boosters. So if you’re arguing, “Hey, well, maybe I’m gonna take the opposite side from what I said back in March when I was saying I’d bet anything that it’s long lasting when you recover based on my entire career of understanding virology.

“How in the world, when you know that the vaccine is of limited duration, do you downplay natural immunity for any reason, Buck, other than — I would say — twofold. One, it undercuts the administration’s argument that everybody on the planet has to be vaccinated — and, two — there are, as you said, tens of billions of dollars at stake because natural immunity doesn’t get Moderna and Pfizer and all of the Big Pharma companies paid.”

BUCK: Yeah, monoclonal antibodies, too, by the way, not the cash cow that the vaccines are. Just putting that out. They do different things; we understand that. But it’s interesting to see how they’re treated so differently. I will say this, too, Clay. I got a very, very dear friend of mine up in Vermont, one of the smartest conservatives I know, and he’s aware…

I know you brought this up in the show. They’re having a pretty serious covid surge up there, and you have super high vaccination rates up there. I’m talking to friends of mine including up in Vermont and other places — well, here in New York, too. Even people who are vaxxed, the boosters have now become the last straw. They’re not doing it. They’re saying, “I’m sorry. I’m ticked off enough that I got vaxxed or whatever,” and I’ll tell you this right now. The Buckster’s not getting boostered.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: That’s for damn sure. That’s not happening.

CLAY: You already got the Spirit Airlines of vaccines with the J&J one shot. I will say this, too: There are some people who will respond to the Vermont data and say, “Oh, well, the death rate is nowhere near what it is in Vermont compared to Florida.” Well, that’s ’cause Florida is, one, a lot bigger.

So you have to look at per capita, but also because Vermont is on the early stages. And if we have learned anything from the data, it’s that what typically happens is infection rates go up, then hospitalizations go up, and then the death rate goes up. In other words —

BUCK: You have to look at population density specifically — and this is why in the early days people confused this. They thought, “Oh, New York City,” and there was this piece in the New York Post about this based on some MIT researcher. “It’s the subway system.” It actually wasn’t the subway system but the densest housing in the city corresponds with the arteries —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — if you will, of the subway system because indoor transmission in houses and housing units is what happens. Dense population, dense housing in Vermont is when you can shout down the field and your neighbor a half mile away can hear you. It’s a very different…

CLAY: Dynamic.

BUCK: No hate to Vermont. It’s a beautiful state. I used to go camp there.

CLAY: It’s 100% true.

BUCK: Yeah. You get what I’m saying.

CLAY: The data trails, I think it’s important to note — and we’ve learned this. The data on deaths trails the data on cases and hospitalizations. It’s a lagging indicator, as opposed to a forefront indicator.