I am not a big fan of Alex Berenson. I don't like journalists because they don't understand population statistics. They are interested mostly in anecdotal cases and their duty is to write about them in an interesting and viral way. And yet, that is an important service to identify targets that are worth of deeper analysis.
In Alex case while he missed many times, he also hit some good targets.
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vaccine effectiveness against infection is lost withing 3-4 months
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prior infection provides stronger immunity than vaccination
The second was always suspected but the evidence was always lacking. Now it turns out that twitter supressed tweets that announced the first real evidence (even if not very strong) that it is the case. I believe that this suppression likely extended wider than just twitter and ultimately influenced the US policy to not recognise immunity from infection when vaccine mandates were put in place. In contrast, most European countries with mandates recognised immunity from prior infection in one way or another as inferior or equal to immunity from vaccination.
There might be some practical considerations – vaccination is easy to register and provide proof. Prior infection is more nebulous, requires expensive testing, some tests are less reliable. The whole idea casts shadow how reasonable vaccine mandates are in the first place. Some would worry that the recognition of immunity from prior infection could also encourage vaccine hesitant to seek getting infected.
Such policies however are very risky because they are conditional on us never finding out the truth. It was always more likely that prior infection confers stronger immunity than vaccination. It was stupid to try to supress the evidence at any time. Eventually it surfaced (as it was bound to) and made those attempts to control narrative look evil.
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To be honest, I don't know how to classify your message. Scott has written a long article that media rarely lies. I believe that this is also not a lie. However, thinking that the whole medical establishment just haven't used this wonderful treatment method out of ignorance is too far fetched. It took time to realize that overactive immune system is killing covid patients but by now we have several approved monoclonal antibodies to treat exactly that. It helps in some cases but overall it is not only about the effectiveness of the drug but diagnosing that it is exactly the case of overactive immune system causing damage in particular cases and the timing etc. Medicine is very complex.
Just because you criticized rationalist community now will not get you any points from me. Rationalists may be sometimes misguided but they are not that bad to believe any story like this without more evidence.
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