Johns Hopkins Professor Dr. Marty Makary to CBN News: 'The Pandemic Is Really Over'

WASHINGTON – As vaccination rates grow, case numbers drop, and we see fewer masks, COVID-19 could soon be behind us and one leading health expert says it's time. 

According to Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a major factor is natural immunity. 

"The pandemic is really over," Makary told CBN News. "The number of daily cases of COVID are 1/50th the number of daily cases of flu in the middle of a mild flu season."

He writes about it all in his book, The Price We Pay: What Broke American Healthcare and How to Fix It, including what the medical establishment got wrong. 

"One important thing as a leader in the medical field or anywhere is humility. We didn't see that. He got so many things wrong," Makary said of Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the president. "I wrote the first article calling for universal masking in the New York Times. Why didn't we hear that from our medical leadership? That is something where I think it would be helpful to hear him say, 'I got it wrong.'"

Still, Makary says he's against calls to oust Fauci and thinks we shouldn't be going after one individual like that. 

Makary says medical experts also got it wrong with natural immunity and highlights why in his latest Wall Street Journal article. 

"It's one of the biggest failures of our medical establishment to dismiss natural immunity," he told CBN News, pointing to two new studies that show its efficacy. "It works. It's durable. You may not need the vaccine and it's probably long-lasting. It's probably life-long."

With more than 60 percent of adult Americans fully vaccinated, Makary says roughly half of those unvaccinated have natural immunity which "explains why we're at herd immunity now and cases are plummeting." 

On the China lab leak theory, Makary was one of few to give it any credence last spring. 

"There are a lot of data points here that suggest the story is very plausible," Makary told Fox News in April of 2020. 

One year later, Makary says people have a right to be angry and want answers.  

"If you think about the consequences here, this is the largest or malpractice case in the history of the world," he said. "People have a right to get more answers and we're not going to get it from a full investigation. Be careful when you hear politicians posturing for a full investigation. We have all the data we're going to get right now and the conclusion is very obvious."

Another obvious conclusion he says: it's time to put this pandemic behind us.

"We need to move on. We need to reestablish the human connection. We've got to address the effects of profound loneliness and rebuilding communities."