Anthony Fauci privately acknowledged “impressive data” showed stronger immunity from a COVID-19 infection than vaccination while publicly pushing mandated shots, newly released documents show.
Former President Joe Biden’s top pandemic response officials discussed a thorough study from Israel showing the superiority of natural infection in August 2021, simultaneous with the initiation of federal vaccine mandates via an Aug. 24 Pentagon memo, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Protect the Public’s Trust, indicating officials who helped compel COVID shots had contemporaneous scientific evidence they were unjustifiable for millions of Americans. The officials distorted the evidence in public statements, repeatedly saying vaccination is necessary for immunity.
“What does it say about our own institutions that, despite billions spent every year, Americans had to rely on Israeli research for their health information, and that our own officials tried to bury what didn’t fit their preferred narrative?” Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain told the DCNF. “There’s been a lot of handwringing about reforms and personnel actions by the new leadership at HHS, but this is just more evidence that the public health bureaucracy was ripe for a thorough housecleaning.”
The revelation comes amid an ongoing investigation under President Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary into deaths following the COVID vaccines in children and young adults. Further details could uncover whether people died from shots mandated by Biden administration officials aware of their redundancy for people with prior immunity.
“This is the evidence right here showing that our nation’s scientific leaders were not acting scientifically, and there needs to be accountability,” said Stephanie Edewaard Weidle, executive director of Feds For Freedom, to the DCNF. “We in the medical freedom fighting world, we already knew this, but to see it spelled out in these FOIA documents just makes it worse. People lost their jobs and their lives were turned upside down based on the argument that natural immunity was not enough.”
‘Look Rather Impressive’
Privately, Fauci and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins acknowledged the strength of an Israeli study, featured in the news division of the prestigious journal Science, showing people who had recovered from a natural infection were 13 times more protected against subsequent infections than those vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. Publicly, the NIH launched a public relations blitz for indiscriminate vaccine mandates.
“The data [in the Israeli study] as reported in the news article look rather impressive . . . . but I would imagine that it is more complicated than we think . . . . [I]t is conceivable and possibly likely that those who have had a serious systemic infection develop a high level of immunity that even surpasses that of full vaccination,” Fauci conceded in an Aug. 27, 2021 email with the subject line “RE: Post infection protection vs vaccine immunity.”
Despite awareness of the “impressive data” showing the strength of natural immunity by August, Fauci advocated for broad vaccine mandates in media appearances throughout the fall.
“When you are in a public health crisis, sometimes unusual situations require unusual actions,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told the “Fox News Sunday” show in October. “In this case, it’s things like mandating, be they masks or vaccinations.”
Fauci said that same fall that vaccine mandates are “very important” because “we’re living in a society and society needs to be protected, and you do that by not only protecting yourself, but by protecting the people around you by getting vaccinated.”
Collins described the study as “puzzling” but “well-designed” in an Aug. 30 email.
“Most of us have been saying up until now that vaccines are actually better for providing immunity – what does the overall synthesis of the data now say?” he asked.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Chief Medical Officer John T. Brooks collected more evidence and delivered the news to Biden’s top COVID deputies: “something is going on here.”
Brooks shared that other studies showed that prior infection was stronger too, including one demonstrating antibodies declined more rapidly each month (by 40% vs. less than 5%) from vaccination vs. prior immunity. Brooks shared a slide with the results and a warning at the bottom: “For internal use only – Not for further distribution.”
A CDC slide circulated internally includes a disclaimer: “Not for Further Distribution.”
The emails show Brooks’ solution for the rapid decline of the vaccines’ protectiveness: more shots.
“It seems now from at least three very different analyses of different data … that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time (especially that induced by [Pfizer]) whereas infection-induced may be more durable up to at least the 4-6 month mark,” Brooks wrote. “The good news here is that boosters look like a solution.”
“[Maybe] this will be a three-dose vaccine after all…” he said.
Top Biden pandemic response officials looped into the discussion about apparent superiority of prior immunity included Fauci, Collins, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Eric Lander, the emails show.
Fauci, Murthy, Walensky and Lander did not respond to emailed requests for comment. An email seeking comment to Collins’s book publisher was not returned.
That same month, these same officials beat the drum for vaccine mandates, which began in earnest following FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine on Aug. 27.
“I am glad to see the President [Biden] insisting that we go forward requiring vaccinations, or if people are unwilling to do that, then regular testing at least once or twice a week, which will be very inconvenient,” Collins said in an ABC News appearance on Aug. 8, 2025.
The Kentucky Study
A key tool in the administration’s push: An observational study of data from Kentucky published the CDC’s in-house medical journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on Aug. 13, 2021, showing fewer reinfections after recovery from infection plus the vaccine than recovery alone — with rates of reinfection in both groups very low. But officials implied fewer reinfections follow the vaccine as compared to natural immunity. Protect the Public’s Trust filed a complaint that HHS had violated its scientific integrity policy in its public communications about the study.
While the Israeli study showing prior infection to be 13 times more protective than vaccination observed 778,658 people, the MMWR study examined 246 people with a breakthrough infection, a tiny fraction of the 275,000 people who had recovered from COVID infection in the state, according to the complaint.
The Protect the Public’s Trust complaint cites a social media post and editorial by Makary, then a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, addressing the Israel study and Kentucky MMWR.
“A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated,” he wrote in the Washington Post.
“The rate of getting a subsequent infection in those with natural immunity was 0.09%. Those who were vaccinated in that time period was 0.03%. The conclusion is it’s extremely rare in both groups,” he wrote on social media of the Kentucky study, per the complaint. “Why did they pick Kentucky? They’ve got data on all 50 states. They only reported Kentucky because they were using a statistical method called ‘fishing’ where you run the data on all 50 states and the one state that gives you the signal that’s consistent with what you want to say is the state you report out.”
What Makary did not know at the time was that the Biden officials he criticized were discussing the obvious contrast between those same two studies in private.
Confronted by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in 2022 about the lack of studies incorporating natural immunity — Fauci then oversaw the NIH’s $6 billion infectious diseases division — Fauci defended the administration’s policies by saying vaccination provides an “extra boost” to people with a prior infection.
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