On Monday’s “CNN Tonight,” UC-San Francisco Professor of Medicine Dr. Monica Gandhi reacted to New York City’s coronavirus vaccine mandate by arguing the city should treat people who have recovered from prior coronavirus infections “the same as the vaccinated.” And that not counting natural immunity seems to be based on politics.
Gandhi said she would tell New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) “to treat the people who have been recovered from COVID the same as the vaccinated. Why? Because at this point, December 2021, we have a lot of data that, not just immunologically shows us that people who have recovered from COVID have strong immunity–and by immunologic I mean B cell data, just this week actually in the Journal of Infectious Diseases–and T cell data, those are called memory cells. Antibodies will actually be higher if you’ve had a severe infection, maybe lower if you’ve had a mild infection. But they come down after vaccination anyway. So, really, it’s about what’s called cellular memory.”
Gandhi also commented on why the U.S. doesn’t count natural immunity from prior infections like many other countries in Europe do, stating, “I can’t quite figure it out. It seems a little bit political, and I’m not even sure where that — what the politics means.”
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