As the nation’s most influential health authority, Dr. Anthony Fauci has insisted during the pandemic that immunity produced by a COVID-19 vaccine is superior to natural immunity derived from an infection.

Many immunologists have pointed out that the claim violates basic science and appears to be motivated by the need to support the political policy of universal vaccination in response to COVID-19.

Now, a clip of a C-SPAN interview with Fauci from 2004 has been unearthed, showing him declaring that a person who got the flu doesn’t need to get a flu shot.

Responding to a question from a viewer who said she had had the flu for 14 days, “Washington Journal” host Peter Slen asked Fauci if she should get the flu shot.

“Well no,” Fauci responded. “If she got the flu for 14 days, she’s as protected as anybody can be, because the best vaccination is to get infected yourself. If she really has the flu, if she really has the flu, she definitely doesn’t need a flu vaccine.”

Slen asked if the woman could contract the flu again.

“She doesn’t need it,” Fauci said of the shot. “The most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself.”

At the time of the interview, Oct. 11, 2004, health officials were concerned about a vaccine shortage.

The caller, a 67-year-old woman in Aitkin, Minnesota, said her first flu shot was some 35 years ago, after being pregnant, and the vaccine made her sick. She also became ill after receiving flu shots while working at a nursing home.

She told C-SPAN it seemed that she was better off just getting infected naturally.

Fauci commented that it’s “very difficult to figure out just on that base of information, what’s gone on with the caller.”

“There are some people who have bad reactions to – in vaccination –even if it’s a killed vaccination,” he said, referring to a vaccine comprised of inactivated parts of a virus grown in a lab. “It is possible since the flu vaccine virus is grown in eggs, then you may have an allergy to one of those components, and what you were feeling was actually an allergic reaction.”

Fauci said it was unlikely that the vaccine failed her every time. But he acknowledged that some people respond poorly to vaccines.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. – who has given a platform to health scientists who charge Fauci has been compromised by politics and power, and is misleading the nation – posted the clip of the 2004 interview.

“And yet Fauci and federal health agencies ignore natural immunity to this day with their destructive and pointless vaccine mandates,” the senator wrote on Twitter. “Why would anyone listen to Fauci? He mismanaged the pandemic from the start.”

And yet Fauci and federal health agencies ignore natural immunity to this day with their destructive and pointless vaccine mandates. Why would anyone listen to Fauci? He mismanaged the pandemic from the start. pic.twitter.com/eDroWertOi

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) March 31, 2022

Last September, as WND reported, Fauci struggled when CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked him why people who already have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 should get a COVID vaccine.

“Should they also get the vaccine?” he asked Fauci. “How do you make the case to them?”

“You know, that’s a really good point, Sanjay. I don’t have a really firm answer to you on that,” Fauci replied.

“That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss, regarding the durability of the response,” he added.

“So it is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time,” Fauci said.

Studies support natural immunity
However, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of natural immunity.

Last August, the CDC released studies showing a “significant decline” in the immunity of fully vaccinated Americans to COVID-19. The move came as the Biden administration prepared to offer booster shots to Americans who got the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines eight months after their second dose.

Meanwhile, researchers have found that as many as 50% of people with no known exposure to the novel coronavirus have an effective response to the virus from their T cells, the part of the immune system that attacks foreign particles.

Further, many studies forecast long-term immunity for people who have had COVID-19.

A study published in February 2021 by Science magazine found “substantial immune memory is generated after COVID-19.” And an article in Nature magazine in May reported researchers believe “people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. ”

A study by Emory University and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that was funded by the National Institutes of Health – for which Fauci works – predicted “long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection.”