Since early in the pandemic, Americans have been led to believe immunity to Covid-19 acquired from previous infection – to the extent natural immunity has been acknowledged at all – fades after three or four months. Why? Because after that time period, antibodies to the virus are no longer detected in the blood.

That was an immediate red flag for me because that’s not how the immune system works. Antibodies don’t stay in the blood indefinitely after infection or vaccination for any virus. If they did, your blood “would be thick as molasses,” as Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, put it.

Rather, after natural infection or an effective vaccine, your body “remembers” the infection. B cells produce new antibodies upon encountering the same or a similar enough virus again and T cells kill virus-infected cells directly.

Having done my undergraduate and graduate work in English, I’m not sure where I acquired this knowledge. Perhaps it was a high school biology or health class, but the first time I heard Anthony Fauci or another “expert” imply immunity went away with antibodies I knew it was wrong.

I had the same experience when I went to my own physician after testing positive for SARS_COV-2 antibodies in January 2021, following an infection the previous December. The physician’s assistant made the casual statement that I should have antibodies for at least three months and left it there. I had to challenge the statement with, “but that doesn’t mean I no longer have immunity to the disease, right?

How many Americans have simply accepted that immunity goes away with the antibodies produced from the infection?

But in an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC on Sunday, Fauci acknowledged that immunity does not go away simply because antibodies are no longer detected in the blood. He now says it is “quite natural” that antibodies go down after a few months (which it is) but that:

“There is an element of the immune response, B cell memory and T cell responses, where even though you see a diminution of antibody levels, it is quite conceivable, and I hope it’s true, that the third shot boost will give a much greater durability of protection. We’re following that very closely.”

I’m not sure why Fauci believes more durable immunity will be provided by a third shot that was not provided by the first two. He did not elaborate.

We have known since July 2020 that prior infection likely does elicit durable immunity, based on a study published on the NIH website (Fauci’s own agency). That study found that even people infected with the original SARS virus in 2003 had a strong T cell response to SARS_COV_2 seventeen years later. So, there is every reason to believe immunity from natural infection with SARS_COV_2 itself confers the long lasting, durable immunity Fauci hopes a second booster will produce.

So, why the sudden acknowledgment of the way the human immune system really works? We can only speculate. Perhaps Fauci is uncomfortable recommending a fourth dose of mRNA given the light shed on risk by high profile figures like Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert Malone. He can certainly scoff at them in public and know they’re right in private. Or maybe he’s just reading the room politically and knows Americans are losing patience with the booster shots (and mandates).

Since more people get infected every day (although I’m not sure Omicron infection is relevant here), acknowledging B cell and T cell immunity and hoping to connect them to the vaccines rather than prior infection could be a way out once the Omicron wave is over.

Whatever his motives for telling at least half the truth, no one should listen to this man about anything ever again. Yet, I cringe when I imagine the way historians will treat him and this pandemic. The same schools presently teaching your children the government ended child labor, protected us from “robber barons” and their “monopolies,” or ended segregation – all falsehoods adopted as articles of faith in the progressive religion – will someday teach future children Dr. Fauci and the Covid Regime saved America from a deadly virus.

Strike a blow for freedom. Get your kids out of the school system.

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?