Who are you going to believe? Me, or me?
That's pretty much what it amounts to.
I've come across Monica Gandhi before. She's an infectious diseases doctor and Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and an expert in HIV. She's no Anthony Fauci, either. Journalist and author Alex Berenson has described her as being:
"...the most reasonable medical voices about Covid - neither a conspiracy theorist nor a lockdown-loving screecher. In PANDEMIA I describe her as 'the rarest of breeds,' a Covid centrist.
So far so good.
According to Berenson, she said this in her most recent newsletter:
And finally, Omicron exposure likely to combat other variants in future since the individual has seen the whole virus; otherwise, would recommend a booster with a whole inactivated virion vaccine like Covaxin/Ocugen (EUA pending at FDA since November 5). [Emphasis added.]
The post was originally titled,
"Dr. Monica Gandhi is done with the mRNA vaccines"
While his interpretation of what she said is a bit breathless for me, it's still fundamentally sound.
Unlike me, Dr. Gandhi is too smart to come out and say openly the mRNA vaccines are useless (if not dangerous) at this point. She knows exactly how far in front of the consensus she can get and still have access to the elite media bluechecks.
This setup is important, because what happened next is mind-boggling to me.
Plus, that last statement, "She knows exactly how far in front of the consensus she can get and still have access to the elite media bluechecks," was nothing short of prophetic.
My first thought was to check the context to make sure Berenson wasn't leaving something out. While I could not find a copy of the newsletter, I did find her tweets on the same subject from January 22, and sure enough she said the same thing there, and then some.
Here are the first tweets, which talk about the mRNA vaccines, which use a new technology to block a spike protein of a virus, and the traditional whole-virus vaccines, which use modified or weakened versions of viral particles to teach the body how to defend against a particular disease.
If seen Omicron (IHME estimates 50% of planet, 40% of US) on top of vax or not, T cells/B cells (and broad neutralizing antibodies) develop across whole virus (not just spike)-picture; variant can't evade broad immunity if still same virus; if didn't see Omicron #covaxin booster
Not only is she specifically recognizing natural immunity, she's recommending a whole-virus vaccines like Covaxin (more on that in a bit), and unlike what Berenson excerpted from her newsletter, Gandhi does make a reference to the mRNA vaccines, and it's not kind.
...develop across whole virus (not just spike)-picture;...
She is drawing a contrast here between broad-based immunity and the narrow spike-centric immunity the mRNA vaccines provide. She is specifically not recommending more mRNA, because she thinks you need something else if we're going to get to the next phase of this pandemic.
This was part of a tweet thread she had started on January 16 explaining, quite reasonably, that we have to start transitioning to a world in which Covid in endemic (in other words, everywhere, like the flu) and deal with it as such.
Moreover, she notes the clear advantages natural immunity confers.
With 1) post-vax infections being so common with this highly transmissible variant (Omicron) & 2) the immunity generated by Omicron providing broad neutralizing antibodies/T cells/B cells across whole virus, this is why so many saying Omicron will push us into endemic phase
Not long ago, search #naturalimmunity on Instagram, and you got this:
I guess we're now permitted to talk about that at least.
Just as interesting, Gandhi's thread was mostly focused on the promising nature of a new vaccine I had not heard of before: Covaxin, developed in India.
In fact, let's spend some time on Covaxin, because it's an important part of this story. What makes Covaxin different is that it's a more traditional vaccine – basically, the whole inactivated virus.
B cells/ antibodies/ T cells? This explains some of the immunology. If we had Covaxin as booster shots (which is a whole inactivated virion virus), that would also expose us to epitopes of the whole virus
There is no way to interpret this other than by what she is clearly saying, with no caveats, and no mention of mRNA vaccines.
Her clear preference, in terms of immunity and entering the endemic phase of this pandemic, is either natural, or natural-like from a vaccine like Covaxin.
Makes sense.
But this is where it gets weird.
Shortly after Berenson's post in which he drew the only conclusions you could draw from what Gandhi was saying (particularly if you read her tweets) he got pushback.
Dr. Gandhi repeatedly said the story and especially the headline did not reflect her views.
The headline was a bit much, yes, but it's the Internet. The body of his piece was sound, again, particularly given what I found on her tweet thread of the same topic.
Dr. Gandhi declined to participate in a Q&A [as I offered] or explain why she had not mentioned the possibility of boosting with the mRNA vaccines or any other specifics in her newsletter post. She also declined to say if she thought more mRNA boosters were appropriate for the general population. She said she had received many emails about the original post.
That last part, that's more revealing than she perhaps had intended.
Her direct quotes:
"I'm not done with mRNA vaccines."
"I think Dr. Graham [Barney Graham, who helped developed the vaccines at the National Institutes of Health] should win the Nobel Prize."
"I think they're fantastic vaccines."
"It's silly to write that."
"I think they are really safe and effective vaccines."
Seriously, what is this? A Pfizer press release? Something written for her by the Biden administration?
What followed was a series of obsequious tweets fawning over the mRNA vaccines, as if she was paying penance to the mRNA gods or possibly pharmaceutical CEOs, it's not clear.
But she ends it with this, basically the same thing she said before, with no mention of mRNA boosters other than a reference to a 4th dose (4th!) for the immunocompromised.
What's so hard about this? Why is she jumping through hoops to avoid saying the obvious – the thing we've pointed out here before?
The mRNA vaccines, for all their innovation, aren't all that good. They just aren't.
She knows this, too. Here is a piece she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle last May, titled,
No, you probably won't need a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, says UCSF's Monica Gandhi
She spends some time going over how immunity works, and how she thought at the time the mRNA vaccines would afford that immunity.
T cell responses after mRNA vaccines (Moderna or Pfizer) maintained their strength against different variants, including P.1 Brazil variant, B.1.1.7 UK variant, B.1.351 South Africa variant and the CA.20.C California variant. A few mutations to the spike protein (even as many as 13) cannot knock out such a robust T cell response.
In one study, 12 volunteers who had never had COVID-19, and were fully vaccinated with two mRNA vaccine shots, underwent biopsies of their lymph nodes — where antibody-producing memory B cells are stored in places called "germinal centers." These biopsies showed that memory B cells were formed in response to the vaccine. And they increased in concentration three, four, six and seven weeks after the first shot.
T cells and B cells. The same T cells and B cells she is now using to extol the benefits of natural immunity and the inactivated Covaxin vaccine.
She ended that piece with this:
Immunity from natural infection or vaccination to COVID-19 is likely to be durable, even against variants. With a 77% one-shot vaccination rate, San Francisco is well on its way to ending its epidemic. The best way to keep people safe now is to put the discussion of boosters aside and work hard on global vaccine distribution.
It's okay to be wrong. It's okay to draw different conclusions when presented with new data. She clearly knows this, otherwise she wouldn't have abandoned this line of thinking and embraced natural immunity and whole-virus (not mRNA spike) vaccines.
But what's not okay is to refuse to do so, and even less okay I think, is to simply ignore it and make believe it never happened, to pretend you didn't say what you just said to preserve a narrative because... why? It's so weird.
Then again...
Covaxin seems very promising, so why hasn't it been fast-tracked like the the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines which took about a month to receive their EUA's from the FDA after having their data submitted?
"We have enough vaccines, the best vaccines available, in the United States," Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said in response to a question about Covaxin during his Thursday interview with Adrienne Bankert on NewsNation's "Morning in America."
"We have enough vaccines available?"
What kind of answer is that?
"The best vaccines?"
How would you know if you're not actively exploring others?
Have you spoken with Dr. Gandhi about that?
When asked about the Covaxin approval timeline, Fauci indicated the interest was surprising.
Surprising.
Perhaps this is part of the problem. So far, Covaxin appears to be particularly safe for the very young.
But hey, let's jab our children with that mRNA vaccine instead! Let's fast track that sucker!
Covaxin might not live up to its promise, but then again, neither have the mRNA vaccines – the goalposts of which have been moved so many times they're in a different stadium.
Regardless, this goes way beyond one person. Gandhi, to her credit, hasn't yet backed down from her original statement. She's still saying what she clearly said:
We need to move to the endemic stage of this and the mRNA vaccines are not going to get us there.
But she doesn't feel she can say anything remotely critical about the mRNA vaccines, or even be seen as having said such, hence her vigorous denials to Berenson. It's as if she feels the need to pass on coded messages to us from inside a prison.
We know who the guards are: media and Big Tech.
But who's the warden?
Addendum: She continues to do damage control, tweeting madly, trying to have it both ways.
Why is it so hard to just come out and say, yes, in the short term mRNA vaccines appear to have a protective benefit, particularly against hospitalization and death, but the long-term side effects are unknown, we can't boost at increasingly short intervals forever, and there are vastly superior alternatives?
In a world in which science has not been corrupted, in which inconvenient voices or ideas do not have to be silenced to preserve a fragile narrative, I wouldn't have to ask the question.
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