A top Biden defense official on Tuesday during a House hearing rejected a leading medical journal’s recent conclusion that immunity is as effective as vaccination.
“Right now, natural immunity is not something that we believe in for this,” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros said.
Cisnero’s remarks ignore The Lancet’s analysis earlier this month on immunity. After an extensive review of 65 scientific studies, the journal concluded that immunity is “at least equivalent if not greater than that provided by two-dose mRNA vaccines.”
The journal furthermore suggested that future policies for workers “should take into account immunity conferred by vaccination and that provided by natural infection.”
Cisneros’s remarks were in response to House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) asking whether the DOD was considering natural immunity when reviewing cases of service members who were punished for not complying with the DOD’s now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Cisneros also argued, despite The Lancet’s finding, “As the research gets better and we learn more about this disease — it’s still very relatively young, it’s only been since 2020 that this has been around — there’s no good evidence and the research is still going on as to how we need to progress with this.”
The Biden Pentagon mandated a COVID-19 vaccine for all service members in August 2021 and sought to discharge all service members who did not comply.
More than 8,400 service members were involuntarily forced out of the military, while tens of thousands were left in limbo as they either applied for an exemption or, in the case of the National Guard, were forced to stop drilling and receiving any pay. Potential recruits were also turned away if they were not vaccinated, amidst a military recruiting crisis.
Republicans in the House and Senate forced the DOD to rescind the policy via the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which overturned the mandate. The DOD, however, has been slow to implement the rescission and still maintains it can kick out service members who did not comply and did not seek exemptions.
Banks also pressed Cisneros on why the DOD is still trying to kick out unvaccinated service members if they did not apply for an exemption, even though the mandate is rescinded.
Cisneros said the services were still “going through a process to look at that and evaluate what needs to be done,” but said those are being kicked out who did not apply for an exemption “refused a lawful order.”
“It’s very important that our service members go and follow orders when they are lawful,” he said.
The DOD has never publicly answered questions as to whether the vaccine mandate was lawful.
As Breitbart News previously reported, the DOD can only mandate a vaccine approved for emergency use authorization if the defense secretary requests and receives a waiver from the president. Instead, then-civilian defense official Terry Adirim wrote a memo claiming the EUA-vaccine and FDA-approved vaccine were “interchangeable.”
The DOD has dodged whether Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin requested and received a waiver from President Joe Biden.
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