Fact Check: Medical Professor Did NOT Warn Natural Immunity Has Made Vaccine Mandates 'Irrelevant' In Lancet Letter

No Warning

Did The Lancet publish a medical professor's warning that natural immunity has made vaccine mandates irrelevant? No, that's not true: The professor cited never uses the word "irrelevant" in his letter to the British medical journal but he does say there are "compelling arguments against such unilateral mandates." It's important to note that the professor is specifically talking about health care workers who have recovered from COVID-19 infection while the industry is in the middle of a labor shortage. He's not recommending this for the population as a whole.

The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by Trending Politics on February 16, 2022, titled "The Lancet Publishes Medical Prof's Warning That Natural Immunity Has Made Vaccine Mandates Irrelevant." It opened:

A highly acclaimed professor of medicine at the University of Leeds is touting that recent findings on Covid natural immunity have made the vaccine mandates irrelevant. Furthermore, the mandates are unnecessarily exacerbating labor shortages in the medical field, which is harming patient care.

This is what the Trending Politics article looked like on February 17, 2022:

(Source: Trending Politics screenshot taken on Thu Feb 17 16:14:49 2022 UTC)

The Trending Politics article cites a letter from Dennis McGonagle, a professor of medicine at the University of Leeds in England, that was published on February 7, 2022, in The Lancet Rheumatology titled "Health-care workers recovered from natural SARS-CoV-2 infection should be exempt from mandatory vaccination edicts." While the Trending Politics headline and article say McGonagle calls vaccine mandates "irrelevant," the word appears nowhere in the letter to The Lancet. The professor specifically argued that health care workers who have had COVID are not an increased threat to their patients and should be exempt from vaccine mandates as a condition of their employment:

[B]efore the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a well-established principle that although systemic vaccination against viral respiratory tract pathogens protects vaccinees against serious infection, these individuals can still transmit virus to non-vaccinated individuals because of a lack of mucosal immunity. Therefore, individuals with immunity resulting from natural infection are probably less likely to transmit the infection to vulnerable patients (who should themselves be vaccinated) compared with those who are vaccinated but not naturally immune.

McGonagle continues his argument. He again links it to the shortage of health care workers, not to the population as a whole, or as a case against a widespread vaccination program:

In some countries, including Germany, the voices of immunologists around the equivalence of natural immunity to vaccination are at least partly heard, since health-care workers who have recovered from natural SARS-CoV-2 infection are exempt from mandated vaccination for 90 days. However, based on the history of viral pneumonia and natural immunity, the scientific basis of this time frame is unclear--arguably it should be indefinite.

There is an ongoing shortage of health-care workers in England, which a vaccine mandate would probably exacerbate; indeed, this seems to be the primary factor in the UK government's reconsideration of the policy. A strong component of averting a further crisis in health-care personnel should include making politicians aware of the power of natural immunity in individuals who have recovered from COVID-19.