Has Merck Said It’s ‘More Effective’ to Catch COVID Than Take a Vaccine?

The pharmaceutical giant has suspended its vaccine research but has not suggested it's better to get the virus.

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A series of social media posts and articles are claiming that pharmaceutical company Merck has said that it’s better to get COVID-19 and recover than to get the vaccine. 

An article from True Defender is headlined: “Merck Stops COVID Vaccine: ‘Studies Showed People Better Off Catching Virus and Recovering!’” An article from a site called Summit News has a similar headline: “Merck Scraps COVID Vaccines; Says It’s More Effective To Get The Virus And Recover.”

While the text of the Summit News article is fairly straightforward, these headlines are misleading and missing context. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Rustin Levy

    The CEO is retiring. Surprise

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  2. Mads Lindstrøm

    Is there anything surprising in a vaccine being "inferior to those seen following natural infection,”? I am not a doctor, but I thought that immunity following disease was almost always more protective than getting a vaccine. The trick is though, with vaccines you can get the immunity without having the disease.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Dan H

      Apparently not *too* suprising (natural mumps immunity is stronger), but still an outlier relative to other Covid vaccines: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-natural-immunity.html

      One of the points made in that article is that vaccines deliver a reliable dose and thus and a reliable antibody reaction, while antibody levels generated by a natural infection can vary dramatically.

      I've also seen immunologists make the point elsewhere that natural immune responses may generate *different* antibodies targeting different parts of the virus, and not all antibodies are created equal. At least with the mRNA vaccines, one can be relatively sure that the antibodies produced are the "good ones" specific to the spike protein. These do double duty - not only tagging the virus for destruction by other immune system components, but also potentially interfering directly with its ability to infect cells before "backup arrives".

      (I also learned from that article that the NYT considers Dr. Pepper a reliable source of information on this topic. Who knew.)

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