Professor granted vaccine exemption after he sues university to recognize natural immunity.
George Mason University says it has no plans to recognize natural immunity. Public interest law firm is looking for others to sue in Virginia.
Here’s his twitter - looks like some good links to follow-bkmarked for later:
Pinned Tweet
Todd Zywicki
@ToddZywicki
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Aug 10
If you only have time or interest to read three key papers on variants, natural immunity, and vaccines, this is a good list:
https://cure-hub.com/post/sars-cov-2-vaccines-breakthrough-infections-and-lasting-natural-immunity (general)
https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.29.454333v1 (continued evolution of natural immunity)
https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261086v1.full.pdf (viral load)
Reading your link to JUST THE NEWS:
It seems the university is now going to give the waiver based on medical reasons—not for natural immunity.
The university issued a lengthy statement late Wednesday to rebut unspecified “public reports,” emphasizing GMU “has not entered into any settlement” with Zywicki and that it can’t comment on his exemption status under state law.
GMU statement on Zywicki COVID exemption:
It has not and “does not plan to give” natural-immunity exemptions, which “would not be consistent with current medical science or public health guidance.” The university cited CDC and FDA guidance but not published research.
“Professor Zywicki has been treated the same as any other Mason employee and is required to comply with all Mason policies regarding vaccination, testing, face coverings, physical distancing, and other COVID safety precautions,” GMU said. “His litigation had no impact on the consideration of his request for a medical exemption from the vaccination requirement.”
Natural immunity better at stopping variants:
The university took an early uncompromising posture toward employees who resisted sharing their vaccination status by promising to remove their eligibility for merit pay increases.
Zywicki threatened to sue when GMU refused to accept natural immunity as an exemption. He published statements from his doctor about why vaccination is dangerous for him and two co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration on the effectiveness of natural immunity.
The public warning from NCLA apparently prompted President Gregory Washington to issue a threat to fire employees who “fail to receive an exemption and do not disclose their status and receive the vaccine.” That language was removed after Just the News asked about it.
The professor has continued to hammer the university since filing suit in early August. ...
Clinical Infectious Diseases, an official journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America:
It found that unvaccinated U.K. healthcare workers with previously detected COVID infection had substantially lower viral loads than their vaccinated counterparts with prior infections - a difference of seven cycle thresholds. (The lower the cycle threshold, the higher the viral load.)
A preprint study of Qatar’s national database of vaccinations and testing, also published last month but awaiting peer review, similarly found the lowest viral loads in unvaccinated recovered individuals.
An older preprint study by New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in the early days of widespread vaccination, found a second vaccine dose actually worsened immunity in recovered individuals. The researchers recommended “at least temporarily” withholding a second shot “to prevent a possible contraction of their spike-specific memory T cell immunity.”
The peer-reviewed version in Cell Reports this month, however, changed the warning about the second dose. It now says “a second dose … may be not necessary” because recovered individuals “reach their peak of immunity after the first dose.”