In this episode, I am speaking with Peter McCullough, M.D. – who is an internist, cardiologist and epidemiologist who has been treating COVID-19 patients throughout the pandemic. He has been the editor of several major scientific journals. He has 46 peer-reviewed publications related to COVID-19 and was one of the earliest advocates for early treatment. Furthermore, he’s the most highly cited physician on the early treatment of COVID-19. We are going to discuss COVID-19, early treatment, vaccine efficacy, herd immunity, and more.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. McCullough and I discuss:
- Is there a gap between the scientific evidence and mainstream narratives about covid?
- How shared decision making is ignored in treating for COVID (And why you should demand to be included)
- Who has the highest risk of severe outcomes of COVID-19
- The actual number of patients who could be saved by proper early treatment of COVID (this will blow your mind)
- The safest drugs to treat COVID
- How the different COVID strains (wild, alpha, beta, and delta) are affected by the vaccines
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Transcript
Ari: Hey there. Welcome back to The Energy Blueprint podcast. I have never been more excited to do an interview. Today, I’m interviewing Dr. Peter McCullough, who is an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist who has been treating COVID-19 patients throughout this pandemic. He’s been a chief editor or editor of major medical journals. He is the recipient of the Simon Dack Award from the American College of Cardiology and the International Vicenza Award in Critical Care Nephrology for his scholarship and research. He’s a founder and current president of the Cardiorenal Society of America.
He has broadly published on a range of topics in medicine with over 1,000 publications and over 600 citations in the National Library of Medicine. He has 46 peer-reviewed publications related to COVID-19 and was one of the earliest advocates for early treatment. He’s the most highly cited physician on the early treatment of COVID. I personally consider him to be perhaps the single biggest hero to emerge in this whole pandemic. Very excited to have you, Dr. McCullough.
Dr. Peter McCullough: That’s a wonderful introduction. Thanks to each and every one of you for listening. I am actually at home right now, but I’ve just managed a case in the last five minutes of a patient of mine who’s just contracted COVID-19, and I am in the cell phone orchestration of what we call sequenced multi-drug therapy for COVID-19. Hope we get into it today.
Dr. McCullough’s take on what is happening in the world right now in regard to COVID
Ari: Yes, we most definitely will. I want to start big picture. I thought long and hard about how to get into this because it’s such a complex thing that’s going on on, so many different levels from scientific and clinical levels all the way to political, what’s happening on a global scale, but there’s been somewhat of a reality divide that’s taking place. We have many people who are operating from the perspective of– The only thing that’s really of concern is a virus and no amount of whatever our governments and scientists’ response to that are a problem.
Then on the other hand, there are people who are very concerned with the response to it and have pointed out that in many ways it doesn’t seem to be scientific or there seems to be corruption taking place. Can you speak to that divide and what is your sense of what is happening in the world right now?
Dr. McCullough: People do have a sense that something is going on bigger than COVID-19. I never forget when I had my interview with Tucker Carlson, I was in his studios in Florida in May, and I was trying to tell him the story of the early treatment of COVID-19, the suppression of early treatment, how things seem to be oriented really towards all roads leading to a vaccine, a needle in every arm. He started to get agitated. He said, “Listen, who’s behind this? What’s going on? What’s driving all this?” I think that’s what part of your question is asking.
I told him, “Listen, I’m just a doctor. I can’t possibly know all of the powerful forces that are at work.” Obviously, they are powerful. Americans and people worldwide can see the forces at work. There are incredibly powerful stakeholders that do want a needle in every arm. I do have to tell you that I think the best resource available right now is by Peter and Ginger Breggin, is called COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey. It is a very affordable book that is a factual book of all the lead-up in the planning for the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are elements of it that are clearly planned. It has over a thousand citations. If you want to see the evidence of how did Moderna have the codes for the patent to the COVID virus before the virus actually was a pandemic? How did Johns Hopkins have a symposium in 2017 called the SPARS Pandemic? And they said, “It’s going to be a coronavirus. It’s going to come out of Asia, it’s going to hit the United States, there’s going to be confusion over drug therapy, and then we’re going to really railroad the population to mass vaccination using social and major media.”
You can see there are clearly planned elements to the pandemic. I’ve been a doctor and just like I mentioned, I’ve been focused on the patient by patient, minute by minute treatment of patients with acute COVID-19 to avoid hospitalization and death. Then also I’ve been relied upon in the US Senate, multiple state governmental houses, Senates and Houses of Commons as well as a major media commentator now, a frequent commentator to the nation and to the world on what is going on in the pandemic in terms of what’s next and what did the data tell us with respect to early treatment, hospital treatments, and then vaccine safety and efficacy.
Early COVID treatment and the importance hereof
Ari: What is your sense of the current status quo of how COVID patients are being treated and how does your approach differ from that?
Dr. McCullough: Hopefully my approach is the standard, and I think it is. Americans know now that COVID-19 is treatable at home. I think the word is out. You can’t stop it now. Once the horse is out of the barn and they know, Americans know that monoclonal antibodies are available. Regeneron monoclonal antibodies, they’re highly effective, multiple infusion centers at every major center. I want everyone to understand like [sound cut] have some medical problems, do not hesitate, get a monoclonal antibody infusion.
A paper in the journal of the Clinical Infectious Diseases [unintelligible 00:05:51] risk of hospitalization if we wait, so monoclonal antibody infusion on day one, even when it’s the mildest of syndromes is well worth it. We can have a great outcome leading up to monoclonal antibody. Americans know this, former president Trump got a monoclonal antibody infusion day one or two. Governor Abbott here in Texas, he was a vaccine failure. The vaccines failed him. He still got a monoclonal antibody infusion. Got the other drugs, got out of COVID very easily.
Most recently, big podcaster Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan got monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, prednisone, the drugs in sequence. That’s just how I drew it up for America. I was on Dan Ball Real America. I said, “Dan, Joe Rogan got textbook treatment. He’s a big guy. Just so you know big men are the ones who die with COVID-19.” The virus slaughters big men. Joe Rogan could have had a month in the hospital miserable. Instead, he had a three- or four-day illness, and he breezed right out of it because he got the right treatment. Americans know we start with monoclonal antibodies and then we lead in with the other drugs. It takes about four to six drugs.
It’s a drug-intensive syndrome, just like acute HIV is, just like acute staphylococcal infections. There’s not a single infection that we wait to treat, we treat early and we’re very successful. We can reduce hospitalization and death by 85%. We may be able to, in some cities in Italy by the way, they’ve gotten down to zero hospitalizations by having a very comprehensive early home treatment program.
Ari: You mentioned Joe Rogan, obviously there was a very big controversy recently about that in CNN’s coverage of that and some other media’s coverage of that, really attacking ivermectin and labeling it a horse dewormer. Dr. Fauci has been asked about this and has said on TV that there is no evidence to support ivermectin being used in COVID. What is your take on that?
Dr. McCullough: I think America is disappointed in their public servants. Now, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, they serve us. We employ them. They work for us. Heads of the National Institutes of Health, they work for us. They’re really kind of at our disposal, if you will. They work for us. They clearly work for doctors and patients. The CDC and NIH, FDA they work for us. They provide data to us. They help analyze information. They regulate drug approvals, but in no way do they practice medicine and in no way are they in a position from a competency perspective, even from a regulatory or liability perspective, they’re in no position to recommend treatment, let alone direct treatment to patients.
This is very, very important. That type of comment is disappointing because it’s misleading. It’s misleading. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons shot out a letter immediately when it happened over to the American Medical Association and all the others that were intertwined with that. You mentioned some of them, they were all spewing misinformation to Americans.
In fact, our Federation of State Medical Boards says they’re going to go after doctors who spread misinformation. That’s a classic example. What do I mean by that? The statement was ivermectin has no evidence. That’s misinformation because there’s over 60 clinical studies, over 30 randomized trials showing approximately a 70% reduction in mortality when ivermectin is used inpatient and outpatient. It’s first-line therapy in Mexico. Mexico City [unintelligible 00:09:25] ivermectin, South America, across many countries, India.
Then most recently it’s first-line treatment in Japan. In Japan, it’s utilized because the evidence is strong. The correct statement was that Joe Rogan was correctly treated, supported by existing guidelines and protocols for outpatient COVID-19 with ivermectin, which is a human drug proven to reduce the risk of mortality in COVID-19. That’s the correct statement. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons really stood up and corrected that for America. Then, after that, actually Sanjay Gupta went on with Joe Rogan and in a sense, he was schooled on ivermectin.
Ari: Yes. Why have these drugs become so controversial? Why have doctors like you become so controversial, where you have medical boards hunting you? This is a quote from Dr. Robert Malone, who I assume you know and you’re friends with, who was talking about this recently. By the way for people listening, he is one of the pioneers in inventing mRNA vaccine technology.
He said in a recent post, “I’m going to speak bluntly. Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted by medical boards and the press. They are trying to delegitimize us and pick us off one by one. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is a fact, this is happening globally.” Why is this happening? Why are they coming after you and removing your letters after your last name?
Dr. McCullough: You and I are participating in a public discussion, and by the law, we have the rights to talk about a topic of public health interest. In fact, it’s against the law to do anything to inhibit public participation of a topic of importance to the population. What we’re doing is actually enormously important as a public health service. On top of that, you and I are going to cite the data all the way through, it’s not going to be conjecture, it’s not going to be free-willing, it’s as tight as it can possibly be. Now, I have actually never been challenged directly by anyone who has an alternative position.
None of them have had the courage to even have a discussion about early treatment or on vaccine safety and efficacy, if that tells you anything. Millionaire Steve Kirsch, who’s the Executive Director of the COVID Early Treatment Fund has laid $2 million on the table and said, “Is anybody willing to come forward and have a discussion, let’s say on vaccine safety and efficacy, just a discussion?” He’ll pay him $2 million. No one will come forward, no one. He has basically said, “Listen, I’ll give a million dollars if anybody can write in a paragraph what the CDC, NIH, and FDA has done correctly in pandemic response.” No one can even write a paragraph to claim that million dollars. What does that tell you?
That tells you that we have an extraordinary time in medicine, we have heroes that are taking the right steps with publications, with research, with protocols and guidelines. We’re acting on the precautionary principle, means we’re taking the precaution of saving lives now by finding drugs that have a signal of benefit and acceptable safety and putting them into combinations, leading as many clinical trials as we possibly can, promoting others, learning from clinical trials, working internationally in order to find the best outcomes of our patients, who could possibly criticize that?
Then the detractors who are in the sidelines, who are in the shadows, they know they’re wrong, and that’s the reason why they can’t come forward and even have a discussion.
A powerful way to changing the world’s approach to COVID
Ari: Yes. To that point, I was actually thinking just this morning, how much of what’s going on could be solved and how much of that reality divide, in fact that this whole thing has been politicized so heavily in the political left and right or in these separate realities. How much of that could be solved if we just had experts debating publicly? You have people like you debating Dr. Fauci broadcast on all the mainstream media channels on this public, on our response on early treatment, on vaccine safety and efficacy. If we had those kinds of public debates, I think it would do enormous good. There’s a quote that I was just reading from an evolutionary biologist, I follow him, Bret Weinstein.
He said, “If you want to know what’s really going on, read the books they wish to burn.” Right now, they are censoring and suppressing the kind of information that you’re putting out there, which is, in other words, they’re trying to burn the books of what you’re producing.
Dr. McCullough: Tucker Carlson said, “Right now, the only thing that is being censored is the truth.” To be fair, our public health officials have limited capacities. Most are not treating physicians, they’re not board certified, they don’t have the clinical experience to know how to handle COVID-19, so they wouldn’t know how to manage treatments or make statements regarding them.
I’m sure none of them have seen vaccine injuries, would understand how vaccines could be used in clinical practice, so it’s not fair to hold public officials up for debate, but they should come to a debate and watch experts at a very high level, [sound cut] academic experts. I was on Laura Ingraham show this week, The Ingraham Angle. I said, you know Laura, we need to have teams of doctors on the four pillars of pandemic [sound cut] on how to slow the spread of the virus. Let’s have a healthy debate on various things that try to reduce the spread of the virus. That’s pillar number one.
Number two, let’s have an A team on early treatment. America needs to see teams of doctors in Washington, who know how to treat the virus and how to organize our treatment response so not a single, another American gets hospitalized. This can be stopped right now if our doctors organize an early treatment program for America, and we really get everybody on board with this. Pillar number three is the hospital. We need to do better in the hospital. Americans are so frustrated, they’re taking hospitals and ICU directors and hospital administrators and chiefs of staff, they’re taking them to court in order to demand proper care. When has ever happened in America?
We need to shake up hospital care and get back to the fundamental principle of autonomy. The patient and their family have autonomy over what’s going on and we have shared decision-making that they share in the decision. It’s not doctors railroading a treatment plan on patients and having bad outcomes in the hospital, it’s got to stop.
Then the fourth pillar is vaccine safety and efficacy. We better have panels of doctors who are getting to get up on TV and review what vaccines are doing, we should have a monthly review, we should have had from the very beginning a vaccine report card. How are the vaccines doing? Which vaccines are working the best to protect against COVID-19? Which ones have safety problems? Why are Americans dying after the vaccine? Why are they being put in the hospital? Why are they being permanently injured? How can this be prevented in the future?
How can the next American who takes a vaccine, how can they get the vaccine safely and not end up with a disaster? I would picture about four different teams in Washington of expert doctors, maybe no more than eight people on a team, I’d be happy to go, I’d testify the US Senate that we should have this four-pillar response and really get things going in America. We’re coming down the backside of the delta wave. We are praying and hoping we don’t have another wave, but we know the virus clearly can get past the vaccines now, so the vaccines are not stopping it, and we need to have a comprehensive approach.
The latest data on vaccine safety and efficacy
Ari: I want to get into the vaccine science, safety and efficacy, but you mentioned autonomy. This is, I feel an important topic because it is one of the foundational principles of medical ethics. It seems to me like it’s been thrown out the window and either people are unaware of it or they feel something is going on that that isn’t important anymore and should be overridden. What exactly is this foundational principle of patient autonomy? What does it mean and how does it relate to what’s going on right now?
Dr. McCullough: People all over the world are seeing what they consider autocratic processes, governments without any deliberation, without any voting. They’ve just put measures into place. They’ve said, “Listen, this is an emergency, and starting tomorrow, people are locked down or starting tomorrow, people are being forced into testing or vaccination.” In the hospital, what’s happened over time, through the course of the pandemic, is doctors and hospital administrators and nurses have said, “Listen, this is what we’re doing period.
We’re giving Remdesivir, no questions about it, or we’re giving dexamethasone 6 mg, no questions asked,” and there’s no more discussion or dialogue. I was just in the hospital on coverage this weekend, and I can tell you every patient I see, it’s a negotiation. We negotiate, blood thinners and sedatives and pain medicines and antibiotics and why we’re going to do things. There’s always a discussion, is called shared decision-making.
Patients and family members must demand shared decision-making and ensure the principle of autonomy. I think a big part of loss of autonomy is isolation. People said, “Oh, it’s COVID-19, you have to go into isolation. Now the family members can’t come.” Isolation means the doctors don’t go in the room. They do it by the computer. They’ve worked out kind of hands-off methods of managing patients, so there’s no more face-to-face contact.
It’s time for patients and family members to absolutely step up, a couple of resources, American Frontline Nurses now is a very strong advocacy group. There are patient desperation
emails and calls that come in every day. I send them to American Frontline Nurses, and that group immediately starts engaging with the hospital and saying, “Listen, let’s get going. Where’s the full-dose anticoagulation? Where’s the full-dose aspirin? Where’s the ivermectin? Where’s the patient conferences with the family members and the doctors?”
We’ve got to stop this business of taking the doctors and hospitals to court. Can you imagine how embarrassed the hospital administrators are and the ICU doctors are when the court tells them to treat patients properly? This is astounding. This is absolutely astounding.
They must be ashamed of what they’re doing every day in the hospital, and Americans know it. I spoke at a conference recently in Frisco, Texas, do you know one of the patients in the audience, he had an oxygen concentrator on, he goes, “You know, I checked myself out of the hospital three weeks ago because they wouldn’t give me any of the proper treatment, I finally got it, and I survived COVID. It was the smartest thing I ever did because I would have stayed in the hospital, I was a goner.”
That is a sad statement when people think if they stay in the hospital, they’re going to get worse care than in the outpatient realm. My advice is, patients who get very good treatment as an outpatient, every so often they do have to be admitted. All the proper drugs that we’re using, proven and randomized trials should be continued as an inpatient. It’s very, very important.
These drugs, we start prednisone as an outpatient, it’s continued as an inpatient, may be converted to Solu-Medrol, but we don’t step down to dexamethasone. If we are using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, that’s continued as an impatient, we don’t step down to Remdesivir. Another example is Colchicine, should be continued throughout. Another example is aspirin, continued throughout. Low-molecular-weight heparin, full dose, milligram per kilogram, continued throughout. Patients with COVID-19, the thing I’ve learned about, I’ve treated so many patients, it’s a long illness.
The older the people are, longer. An average person our age, about 10 days of treatment on average. Senior citizen, 30 days. Plan for a long illness, plan for multiple drugs. The biggest mistakes I see in COVID-19 is doctors and patients are not being intensive enough with the drugs and the stakes are high. Hospitalizations are costly and inconvenient but death is irretrievable.
Ari: You gave a recent talk on therapeutic nihilism. What is that?
Dr. McCullough: I recently supercharged an audience in Lincoln, Nebraska, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, last week, and I mentioned the term therapeutic nihilism. That means this tendency towards doing less and less for patients, and some of this is actually encouraged by pharmacy boards and medical boards and others that are basically trying to stop doctors from caring for COVID patients. There’s been threats, like if you prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or budesonide or Colchicine, that we’re going to look at your medical license.
We’ve had threats from insurance companies saying, “We’re going to drop your insurance contracts.” We’ve seen threats from hospital administrators, “Don’t you dare try to treat COVID patients.” Doctors have lost their jobs because they treated COVID patients. Well, I have to tell you, some people in the audience really listened. I asked for a show of hands, more than half the people in the audience had had COVID-19, and this is an adult audience. The vast majority got early treatment, they found it, they demanded it, and you know what the Attorney General of Nebraska responded within 48 hours?
He wrote a brief, I’m heavily cited in it, and he said, “Don’t you dare ever harm doctors who are appropriately using hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and other appropriate drugs in the treatment of COVID-19.” That Attorney General Report was triumphed all over the United States and said back to those entities that are trying to block treatment to patients, “Don’t you dare try.” Senator Bob Hall in Texas has done a wonderful job with Town Hall meetings, I was just on one of them. He has shot a message over to the president of the Texas Medical Board and said, “Don’t you dare touch these doctors who are trying to help patients.”
He says, “I am relying on them to guide our response in COVID-19. I’m relying on their scientific and medical expertise to inform Texans on what’s going to happen in the pandemic.” He invited me as one of the medical presenters on the March 10th Texas Senate hearings on COVID. My information was relied upon in terms of ascertainment of herd immunity and pushing for monoclonal antibody access, et cetera. We have some real heroes among our non-physician colleagues in the legal and political arenas, and we need more of them.
Early treatment and lives saved
Ari: What do you estimate as far as and I know this is a tough question to answer, but if you were going to estimate of the people who have died thus far from COVID, what percentage of them maybe would have survived had they gotten your treatment? What is your sense of the degree to which they are receiving adequate treatment? How many do you think could have been saved had your methods been used?
Dr. McCullough: The CDC estimates of all the deaths of COVID-19, about 10% are really COVID-19 itself and then 90% patients have additional medical problems that played a role in death, like myocardial infarction or heart failure, emphysema, Alzheimer’s disease, et cetera. We know that deaths occur in the seniors. COVID-19 by the way has always been a problem of the seniors, we should always have our focus on the elderly with COVID-19. We should never be distracted by children with COVID-19. It needs to be focused on the elderly.
Importantly, I testified in the US Senate, November of 2020, that 50% of the Americans lost could have been saved. At that point in time, I think we had about 350,000 deaths in the United States. We are now up to 700,000 deaths, by the way, half the deaths have occurred since the vaccine program has started. Vaccine program has made no impact on mortality.
I testified in the Texas Senate, March of 2021, the real number is 85%. 85% of Americans could have been saved with early ambulatory treatment and then optimal inpatient care. Everything that’s been done to block early treatment, to make it hard to find monoclonal antibodies, to have insurances block budesonide, have pharmacies block hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, have questions raised regarding the use of colchicine, having difficulty actually even using Betadine.
Betadine is an iodine solution we use in a very dilute oral and nasal wash. It’s very effective in preventing COVID-19. It’s very effective in aborting the illness if done very intensively in the first couple of days. We’ve heard stories of pharmacies now taking Betadine off the shelf and putting it behind the counter so patients can’t find it. The cruelty to sick patients with COVID-19, there seems to be no limit to the cruelty, and it started very early on. I remember turning on the major media, and when someone got COVID 19 early in the pandemic, they were being blamed as a super spreader or they didn’t wear their mask or they did something wrong.
From the very beginning, COVID-19 has always been a disease where we blame the victim, and the victims– It’s just putting salt in the wound. It’s hard enough to be sick with COVID-19 but then to have pharmacies block treatment, to have doctors attempt to treat patients and then feel the threat of reprisal from their employers, this is unconscionable. Historians are going to write about this. In fact, historians are already writing about this, what went wrong in medicine and how can so many people be working together seemingly in lockstep to make the pandemic much worse than it has to be.
Ari: There is a cognitive bias that some people have where they hear the kinds of things that you were just talking about and their brains immediately go, “Well, if they were doing that, if they were removing the Betadine or if they were blocking the use of this drug or that drug, it must just be because those things are bad.” In other words, people have a bias towards believing, trusting the authorities, believing that everything that they do is always justified scientifically, making that assumption. Seemingly no matter how much unscientific things happen, they always assume it must be scientifically justified. What–
Dr. McCullough: If they had an adequate replacement, let’s say, they said, “Well, Betadine is bad. We really think you should use sodium hypochlorite or peroxide,” I’d say fine. If they said, “Oh, hydroxychloroquine is bad, but you should really use this drug,” I’d say fine, but all of these moves we’ve discussed lead to what’s called therapeutic nihilism. All of these roads lead to no treatment. All of these roads lead to promoting fear, suffering, isolation, hospitalization, and death, every single one of them.
Let’s just take Betadine oral-nasal wash, this is the most benign thing in the world. Ophthalmologists use Betadine eye drops. We use it for surgical procedures. If we dilute it, as long as people don’t swallow it, they swish it. Even sodium hypochlorite, which is household bleach, a few drops in a glass of water, that’s supported by the American Dental Association for Epstein-Barr virus, Cytomegalovirus infections, dilute hydrogen peroxide, who could not to support that?
Do you know when the news broke in a randomized trial by Chowdhury and colleagues, that using this Betadine approach in patients with early COVID-19 could abort the illness in about 75% of cases. This got promulgated, in fact the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons in its guidance actually advises this preventively and then it’s ramped up in the acute treatment. Do you know that there were email blasts that went out to doctors through Medscape and other conventional medical media that said, “Anti-vax doctors push Povidone-iodine will cause thyroid toxicity and iodine overdoses.”
Literally, it was a message to try to dissuade doctors from the use of Povidone-iodine. We had seen an entire year of messages of trying to dissuade the use of hydroxychloroquine, “Hydroxychloroquine causes unsafe, causes cardiac arrhythmias,” and here’s a drug we’ve used for 65 years. It never came up on our email list before COVID 19. Same thing with ivermectin. We heard unbelievably fraudulent claims on ivermectin. There was some fellow in Oklahoma that was saying that the hospitals were overflowing with ivermectin overdoses, and people were dying of liver failure.
Finally, one of the hospital administrators came on and said, “Listen, I have to tell you. There’s nobody here with ivermectin poisoning. Everything is okay.” Things have gotten out of control that– [crosstalk]
Ari: That was an article published in Rolling Stone magazine claiming that a certain hospital was overflowing with cases of poisoning for ivermectin, and it was retweeted by Rachel Maddow and a number of mainstream media outlets perpetuating the story. To my knowledge, almost none of them corrected it and retracted the story after it was discovered that it was entirely fabricated.
Dr. McCullough: Right. Think about how many doctors and patients were dissuaded from using ivermectin and how many patients were hospitalized or died because of that. This is the type of misinformation that we’re talking about, is intentionally misleading. This is very intentional to say that hospitals are overflowing with ivermectin overdoses is intentional. Do you know what the November 2020 Senate hearings? They asked me to analyze a report that said, “In 2020, the big push was for hydroxychloroquine [unintelligible 00:31:06]” because it is a standard of care in so many countries.
About a Poison Control Center report that there was an overwhelming number of calls to Poison Control Center regarding hydroxychloroquine poisoning. You know, our team made a few calls. You know what we found out? The vast majority of calls were administrative, “Do I take one pill or two pills a day? Do I take it with food or not with food?” You know what? Ivermectin, the same thing happened. They said, “Oh, the Poison Control has been overflowing with cases of ivermectin poisoning.” Made a few calls, it was published in TrialSiteNews, the same thing.
They were just administrative because it’s a weight-based dosing. It’s either 200, 400, or 600 micrograms per kilogram and then people were just clarifying the dose. These drugs are safe. They’re effective. There has been an unbelievable campaign to try to dissuade people from using these drugs and it’s worldwide. Whatever is going on, it’s all over the world. Interestingly, it’s so bad in some states in Brazil and it’s so bad in South Africa that doctors have learned how to treat COVID-19, no ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine needed, there’s other ways to treat it.
It turns out there’s many ways to treat the virus as long as we handle viral replication, the inflammation, cytokine storm, and thrombosis. If we handle those three phases, we don’t even need those drugs. A patient that I’m having right now get a monoclonal antibody infusion, it’s been my experience that if I handle the viral replication upfront with that, I can skip hydroxy and ivermectin. I’m going to move on to the other drugs in the sequence. I do that every day in my practice. In Brazil, what they use is they don’t use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
They use a form of what’s called nitrofurantoin which is another intracellular anti-infective and they actually use anti-androgen drugs because it turns out the androgen hormones are related to how the virus initially damages the body. They use those temporarily. In South Africa, I’ve done a seminar with Dr. Chetty. He’s the first one who innovated here. He just lets the virus click along. He actually times the illnesses, is called the Eighth Day Protocol on day eight, then he starts a range of drugs. One is called Cyproheptadine and the other one is montelukast. Then, the inhaled and oral steroids, aspirin, anticoagulants, the same principles.
The idea here is that it appears as if there is direct intent by suppressing early treatment all over the world to cause harm. I think everybody should be alarmed for this. All those entities that are sending these email blasts to doctors, the scientific writers who are writing these fraudulent stories, all the players that are involved that are doing everything possible to suppress early treatment of people need to really start asking some questions, doing their own investigation, and importantly, it needs to stop.
Ari: Yes. I’m sure you saw this article several months ago published in the British Medical Journal, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. The executive editor of the journal wrote a piece on politicization and corruption in the pandemic. He said, very directly, I was pretty shocked by this, “Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain.” Can you speak to that at all? I know you’re very resistant to get into that, but if you have any idea of what the incentive is for them to attack and suppress all of these things involved in early treatment?
Dr. McCullough: In the United States, we have a two-party system. We have Republican and Democrat. I honestly can’t see a political angle here. I really can’t. We’ve had two different presidential administrations, one Republican, one Democrat. None of them had any focus on early treatment. They’re using the same sets of directors of the public health agencies.
We’ve had the director of the National Institutes of Health now announced resignation, that may be a signal. We’ve had two senior FDA officials in the vaccine branch resign, including the one who signed the biologic licensing agreement to bio and tech for Comirnaty resigned. I honestly don’t think it’s political. If it’s political, how can it possibly range across all these countries in Asia and South America?
What political party is global and achieve some political– I can’t answer whether or not is political. I just think it’s global. It’s got to be something much bigger than political. People say, “Well, it’s just financial. The drug companies want to make more money.” I said, “Boy, that’s diabolical. 700,000 dead Americans because a pharmaceutical company wants to make more money?”
No, I don’t know. I think it’s deeper than politics. I think it’s deeper than money. I would point you to Peter Breggin and Ginger Breggin, COVID-19, and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey. It’s probably the best resource that we have, 1000 citations. It’ll tell you who the actors are and who the players are on this. I don’t know. I don’t care to speculate, but whatever it is, I think it’s way bigger than political and it’s way bigger than financial.
Vaccine efficacy and safety
Ari: Yes. Let’s get into some of the nitty-gritty data on vaccine efficacy and safety. What are your thoughts on that? You’re welcome to share any slides if you’d like to do that. Do you have any big-picture thoughts on vaccine safety and efficacy and what is going on right now that you feel is not warranted by the scientific evidence?
Dr. McCullough: Well, I’ll just make my overarching comment that we’re overdue. Americans should have been getting a report card every month on vaccine safety and efficacy. There are three products in the United States, Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. I can tell you they’re not the same. Moderna is 100 micrograms of messenger RNA, Pfizer’s 30 micrograms of messenger RNA, Pfizer for the small children is going to be 10 micrograms of messenger RNA. We have Johnson & Johnson, which is adenoviral DNA. Johnson & Johnson now is going to be a two-shot sequence of two months apart.
Americans need a report on what vaccines are working the best, which ones have the best protection of COVID-19 and all the reports month by month have to be coded to what strains that we have. I can tell you in the fall of last year, they all look pretty good going on the clinical trials back when we had the wild type, and the alpha, beta, and some gamma variants. They look great. They had 90% vaccine efficacy for Pfizer, Moderna, about 70% for Johnson & Johnson. That’s acceptable. They look fine. There weren’t any safety problems coming out of the vaccine program.
There were some sore arms, but that’s about it. The explosive data came out after they got released on the emergency use authorized market because doctors were not prescribing these. These were wide open. People could just walk up and get a vaccine without any questions asked. There was no doctor review. There was no integration of clinical trial data and everybody started going for vaccines. In my practice without my encouragement, and remember, these are research. Considering the concept form, the use of either word investigational research.
Doctors according to the Nuremberg Code, which is part of the Office of Human Research Subjects and Protections Framework, doctors cannot encourage or discourage the vaccine because its research. Very important. Public health officials and employers cannot encourage or discourage research. The Nuremberg Code says that individuals must receive no pressure, coercion, or threat of reprisal. I followed the Nuremberg Code. I never encouraged and I never discouraged the vaccine. 70% of my patients took the vaccines, December, January, February, March. People in my family took the COVID-19 vaccines.
It was their choice, and they did it under free choice. I don’t think anybody had a problem. Back when vaccines were under free choice, what did we learn? We learned the vaccines held out pretty well in terms of vaccine efficacy. There’s an MMWR publication that came out. That’s the CDC journal. They reported that for protection against hospitalization and death, which we do not have in the randomized trials, but they finally had some real-world data.
Through the early months of the program, they had Moderna at 90% protection, Pfizer at about 30% protection, and Johnson & Johnson at about 60% protection. This is in a CDC journal. That’s terrific. What’s the caveat? The caveat is they didn’t have data with delta. What happened was, the vaccines were given in so many people that the virus basically, it became much more monolithic in terms of its strength configuration. There was always a half, a dozen, or more strains. Now it became a single dominant strain, which was Delta. Now we have data from multiple labs, the Wisconsin Department of Public Health, UC California Davis, both have clearly shown that the Delta variant thrives in the vaccinated. It thrives in the nose and the mouth of those who are vaccinated, very high viral loads just as it does in the un-vaccinated. Those who received the vaccine are having no protection from the Delta variant.
We know that because in Israel, where they’re ahead of us, about three or six months ahead of us in vaccines that their post-vaccination curve with Delta is far greater than their pre-vaccination curve. The vaccines have made it worse because the Delta variant living at higher viral loads in the vaccinated and it’s more contagious and that’s what we’re ending up with here. It’s pretty clear. Our CDC director came on this summer and said, “If you’ve gotten the vaccine, it’s not going to stop you from getting Delta or transmitting Delta.” A paper from [unintelligible 00:41:06] Houston showed that we had data in healthcare workers from Chow and from keener that clearly showed healthcare workers were getting Delta and passing it to each other, spreading it to each other. That was not going to be the answer.
Now we have the real-world data pouring in that’s really got people worried. October 12, the CDC reported to America now they had over 30,000 Americans fully vaccinated by strictly CDC criteria that had either died or been hospitalized. Sadly, of that composite 20% were deaths. We learned that 87% and 67% respectably of those who died or are hospitalized. She is telling us on their website, that the vaccines are failing in large numbers in our seniors. Everybody should worry. These are the data. I’m just giving you the data.
This is just clear-cut information. Everybody can go to the CDC website and see right now the free-fall failure of the COVID-19 vaccine program.
Ari: What about those who say that it’s still 90% or 95% effective in preventing hospitalization and death? For example, that we have Dr. Fauci and others still making those claims, claiming it a pandemic of the unvaccinated. There’ve been a number of reports, over the last few months, people saying, “Only 1% or 5% of people who are dying are fully vaccinated.” What do you make of all of those claims?
Dr. McCullough: Whether someone’s been vaccinated or not vaccinated, they’ve made a choice. They’ve made a trade-off. Those who have taken the vaccine they have taken the risks of actually dying with the vaccine or being hospitalized or permanently injured. That part of the equation, and again, doctors shouldn’t complain about it that’s their choice. If someone took the vaccine and they developed a blood clot or myocarditis, doctors shouldn’t complain. They made a free choice on that. If someone chose not to get the vaccine, they end up in the hospital, COVID again, doctors shouldn’t complain. There are two sides to that equation.
Two important analyses, one by Tracy Høeg, University of California Davis, a young person is more likely to be hospitalized with vaccine myocarditis than they are being hospitalized, taking their chances with COVID and being hospitalized with COVID. Again, the person who gets hospital’s a COVID in a sense has made a smart choice, they picked a lesser of two outcomes. The same thing cost of analysis, in toxicology reports, showed that someone is more likely to die with the COVID-19 vaccine than take their chances with getting COVID-19 and ultimately dying of COVID 19.
The reason why choosing to forgo the vaccine is such a wise choice is because not everybody gets COVID. When you take the vaccine, it’s 100% of people actually have it in their body and you can’t get rid of it. That’s one of the reasons why that trade-off works so well. The false talking point that it’s a crisis of the unvaccinated or at least an over-exaggerated crisis of the unvaccinated is really striking. This came out one day in the early summer. I never forget. There was a montage on the media where everyone was issued the same talking point like there’s many officials, hospitals, administrators, doctors, crises of unvaccinated.
Do you know, two papers, one by Haber’s, published by the CDC COVID network and then by Fillmore in the VA through show through June, as Delta was becoming more prominent that 23% of Americans hospitalized were vaccinated. 23%, not 1% 23%. Now we have CMS data through Project Sailors through the first week of August to August 10th, 60% of Americans over age 65 in the hospital with COVID are vaccinated. It is a relative crisis of the vaccinated now in the hospital as the vaccines fail. Why because Delta went from just a few percent early in the spring now we’re 99% Delta and the vaccines don’t cover Delta. From this point forward, it’s going to be roughly proportional, just like it is in Israel, just like it is in the UK, Iceland, and also what I mean by that is right now in America, we have 60% vaccinated, 40% unvaccinated.
We’re going to probably run 60, 40 in the hospital because the vaccines don’t work and it’ll be the same thing in seniors. It’ll be a greater numbers of seniors. We have 80% of seniors that took the vaccine will run probably 80, 20 in the hospital. It’s just going to be a proportional situations because the vaccines don’t prevent hospitalization or death in COVID-19.
Ari: You mentioned a researcher, Tracy Høeg’s analysis on young people in particular, and you talked about risk-benefit analysis. This seems to me to be an enormously important topic, that very, very few people in the general public seem to be capable of understanding. This very black and white thinking. We have a deadly virus. We have an amazingly effective vaccine. Obviously, if you don’t want to die from the deadly virus, you get the vaccine, but there is this other side, as you were talking about, which is there needs to be a risk-benefit analysis of what are my risks of the virus? What are my risks of the vaccine itself and that risk-benefit analysis looks pretty different in different demographics? Would you agree with that?
Dr. McCullough: It does. That’s, again there is part of this report card. The CDC and FDA should tell us, there must be a population that’s very safe to take the vaccine. We know 180 million people took the vaccine. The vast majority of those people did fine. They need to tell us who the profile is that people do fine and who are the people who don’t do fine. We’re up to about three-quarters of a million certified safety reports. We’ve had over 16,000 Americans die with the vaccine. We’ve had 250,000 people put in the hospital or emergency urgent care or ER. People have been faithfully filling up these various forms.
We know from prior studies one cited by the Association of American Family Practice that about 14% of various reports are filled out by the patient. The rest are filled out by concerned doctors, caregivers, other stakeholders, sometimes the pharmaceutical companies. I can tell you, I filled out two various forms last night and it takes a long time. It’s done under threat of imprisonment or federal fines if they’re falsified. I’m telling you 750,000 bears reports. That is a lot and they’re serious and the CDC has temporary VAERS and permanent VAERS once they’ve certified and the data I’ve given you are permanent VAERS, go look it up at OpenVAERS.com.
I’ve given you these numbers and the real numbers as of October 1st are slightly higher, I just don’t have them all committed to memory. I can tell you, this is a catastrophe. We’ve never had a biologic product that has basically resulted in so many deaths so quickly and landed people into the hospital. I think the growing category to be concerned about is those who are permanently disabled and many times these are along the lines of FDA warnings. There’s an FDA warning, a Pfizer, and Moderna from myocarditis. When the CDC and FDA reviewed cases in June, they had 200 cases and I told America multiple times on national TV, this is probably the tip of the iceberg.
Now, here we are October 1st, we have 6,800 cases. Indeed it was the tip of the iceberg that the FDA has official warnings on Johnson & Johnson for blood clots in the brain, cavernous sinus thrombosis that many times it’s permanently disabling. Then Guillain-barré syndrome, the ascending paralysis that can be permanently disabled. We have 20,000 Americans now that are new disability patients as a result of the vaccine. Every single one of them regrets the vaccine. I can tell you, Laura Ingraham on Fox News had a wonderful 72-year-old female who took the vaccine and then had a surge in blood pressure and a hemorrhagic stroke of which was very disabling for her.
It’s been reported in the journal Hypertension that those with previous high blood pressure, which is common, can have a massive surge in blood pressure and have catastrophic outcomes. There’s a young man in my circles who’s 42. He took the second dose of the messenger RNA vaccine and suffered an aortic dissection as a product of a severe rise in high blood pressure, almost suddenly, and now his life is ruined. He’s had to have a thoracotomy, et cetera. I can tell you my circles, we’ve had people with artificial heart valves and other problems where there’s a massive blood clots form in the body. There are blood clotting syndromes in the portal venous system in the abdomen, acute stroke, acute myocardial infarction. Your listeners can go to the VAERS Red Box Report on open vaers.com and get a weekly update. The goal if you’re going to take the vaccine is not to be red boxed, not to end up in a red box, but these numbers are so large, and unless our agencies start to become transparent with Americans and who is ending up in these boxes and why there’s incredible vaccine hesitancy and is justified?
Ari: Is there any specific demographic you would recommend the vaccine for strongly or any specific demographic you would strongly advise to get it?
Dr. McCullough: We call that the vaccine– remember the vaccines none of them are approved. We have– Pfizer didn’t get approved, it’s still emergency use authorized, and that BioNTech Comirnaty just got the biological use agreement, but there’s not a product exist in that state. The consent form all says research or investigational and by the code of ethics for research, research cannot be encouraged or discouraged. A physician has no role in encouraging or discouraging the vaccine. I’ve been very strict on that because I follow the code of ethics.
Now others have not filed the code. Let’s say all the major societies, [unintelligible 00:51:27] college of obstetrics, [unintelligible 00:51:29] college of pediatrics, all the other major organizations have completely thrown out the code of research ethics, and they are broadly encouraging COVID 19 vaccination. When patients actually sign the consent form, it says, “Wait a minute, you’re not being encouraged to do this. You’re doing this out of your own free will. You’re not being forced into this. That consent form says that vaccines may not work, they may not be safe. You’re participating in research.”
You can imagine someone who’s forced into vaccines by their employer and then when they get the consent form, the consent form says just the opposite. The consent form says, “You’re doing this under your free will. This is voluntary and you’re in research.” No. We cannot have ethically anybody in this country or in the world be forced to participate in research. It is purely an elective choice.
Ari: Is there any demographic you feel strongly about recommending not to get it or that should avoid it? For example, in California, they’re taking action. Governor Newsom is taking action and mandated kids aged five and up.
Dr. McCullough: Well, let’s take some– Here’s some general principles that I think are pretty solid. If somebody already has a problem in that organ system and they do get a superimposed vaccine injury syndrome in that organ system, it’s just going to lead to more disability. Let me give an example. Let’s say if a patient has multiple sclerosis or has seizures or has dementia and they get a neurologic injury syndrome, they can be taken from being semi-functional to basically being completely dependent. Okay? Let’s say a patient who already has heart failure already has a cardiomyopathy of some sort.
Well, if they get the myocarditis, they could actually wind up having fatal heart there or cardiac death. It just makes sense. Where the organ system is already in trouble and now we’re going to lever a superimposed injury. Let me give you another one. Patients who already have autoimmune problems. Now we know that if we actually lever more autoimmunity on the system, we could have a worsened autoimmune situation and then lastly, blood disorders. I think this is very clear. There are Americans who have blood clotting disorders, Factor V Leiden, Protein CNS deficiency. Antithrombin III Deficiency.
They’ve already had blood clots and now all of the vaccines are strongly promotional of blood clots in the body. Can you imagine someone who’s already had a blood clotting problem? Now they’re faced with a massive risk of a blood clot, and that’s the reason why you see the pilots basically walking away. They’re saying, “listen, we are caught sitting down, we have to sit down for long periods of time, we are so fearful of taking the vaccine and dying of a blood clot in the cockpit”. These tensions here– the vaccines can only be elective.
They should never have and gotten anywhere close to being encouraged or discouraged or being put into mandate form. The historians are going to write about this, that somehow we ended up with this group of vaccines that didn’t have a favorable proposition in terms of risks and benefits. In the end, it didn’t even work against COVID, and then on top of that, we forced it on the population and we got to the point where people started walking off their jobs. This is going to be historic.
Ari: Even, people with natural immunity, which the evidence already shows is superior to vaccine induce.
Dr. McCullough: Oh, and certainly there are demand letters into the CDC saying, Listen, you absolutely positively.” The end game is natural immunity because the vaccines don’t work. People who have the vaccines, actually they have to get COVID anyway to get natural immunity. Even if you’ve taken the vaccine, you’d have to give some credit for natural immunity because when you finally get the illness, you’re done. You’re not going to get it again. You have to drop out of the vaccine program because you’ve already hit an endpoint. People who’ve already had COVID-19, they already hit the endpoint.
The vaccines are supposed to prevent COVID-19. If you’ve already had COVID-19, you’ve already met the endpoint. The vaccines don’t have a role. What Americans need to know is there’s no fundamental chance of getting COVID-19 a second or third and fourth and fifth and 25th time. This is not something that just keeps rolling and rolling in every month.
It swept through the nursing homes early. We are not hearing about the nursing homes anymore because it’s basically lived out that part of the pandemic. We know now that there are nearly 90 references supporting natural immunity being robust, complete, and durable.
People don’t get it again. The only confusion is if someone gets a positive test later on. There’s such a proclivity to get these tests at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, people are forced into it because they have to travel or go to school. The tests generate false positives. I’ll give an example. Patient in my circles, ahead COVID-19, a well-documented case last winter, he was at work and he was around some other people who developed COVID-19 who were vaccinated and they got COVID-19. He was not vaccinated. He was relying on his natural immunity.
Now, he’s got a fever and some diarrhea. I was [inaudible 00:56:42] should he get a COVID test? Should he get a COVID test?” I said, “No. You can’t get it twice.”, “Should I get a test?” Sure enough, he got a test, negative. I’m just telling you, people keep pushing the issue here. You don’t get it a second time. Natural immunity is the end of the pandemic. We must welcome the end. We have to. If we don’t accept natural immunity, we’re not welcoming the end of this. This is a perpetual fear-based cycle of a downturn in our society if we don’t accept natural immunity. It’s so important.
Jennifer Block, great medical writer, British Medical Journal, September 17th issue by May, 120 million Americans had natural immunity. 44% of those aged 18 to 49. Now, after our Delta curve, it’s going to be way more. The naturally immune have absolutely not a single care in the world. They don’t need to wear a mask. I’m naturally immune. I’ve come face to face with Delta, people coughing all over me, no mask. I can’t get it a second time. I’m here to tell you, I’m fine. I’m fine. We’ve made a video about this. I told my pastor, I said, “Listen, we’re fine. Once we get it–” I advised Sri Lanka, they ran out of personal protective equipment. They were getting panicky. I said, “Get your COVID- recovered people out there manage the treatment centers. You’ll be fine.” They did, they were fine.
Ari: Which is crazy that we just lost 500,000 healthcare workers. Many of whom want to work and were naturally immune. Dr. McCullough, I would love to talk to you for three more hours. I want to be respectful of your time. I know you have a hard cutoff, but I have one final request for you. Feel free to do a minute-long answer. If you have any specific recommendations for what people can do on their own at home to help prevent or mitigate the harms from COVID.
Dr. McCullough: I would say the single most important thing is if you have not had the virus and whether you’ve taken a vaccine or not, get Betadine, the brown liquid, B-E-T-A-D-I-N-E. Get a bottle of it. It’s about $7. Then, at least twice a day on days you go out, do an oral-nasal rinse. Spray it up your nose, snort it out, then follow it with Scope or Listerine. On days you go out and you think you get exposed, boost it to four times a day. Then, if COVID-19 strikes, get an early test. Get a test, get a 10-minute test, an antigen test. Then, really intensify the Betadine. Then, immediately get into a treatment protocol.
If you’re over age 50, have medical risk factors, scout this out to your doctor. Demand treatment and ask your doctor, “Do you treat COVID-19?” If your doctor says, “There’s no treatment.” Or, “I don’t do it.” Say, “Give me a referral.” Then, each senior who’s listening, make sure you know where your monoclonal antibody centers are. My patient contacted me today and she goes, “I got COVID-19.” She’s over 65 and she didn’t scoot up at the antibody center.
Now, I’m scrambling to try to get her an antibody fusion. All this should be pre-determined. Have it written down on a piece of paper. Have your COVID-19 plan. If you get COVID-19, intensify the Betadine oral-nasal washes to every four hours. You can abort the illness about– Don’t let it bake in your nose and mouth for three days. That is a mistake. When I had COVID 19, I made that mistake and I regretted it. The clinical trials weren’t done with betaine. If I would’ve known it, I would’ve blasted it. Move right into nutraceuticals and supplements we know vitamin D vitamin C, quercetin, and zinc play a huge role keep those well maintained and then start the monoclonal antibodies and the highest risk the oral drugs and others as I’ve gone over and get early treatment.
You may think it’s overkill because the virus always starts out mild. Every person who’s died of COVID-19, it starts out as a mild illness. They say, “Doc, I thought I just had a mild case,” and now they’re 10 days into it and they’re seeking care. Treat it early, like Joe Rogan, and snuff it out. I’ll let that be the last word cause I have to go.
Ari: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Dr. McCullough. I really appreciate your time.
Dr. McCullough: Thank you.
Ari: Thank you for the work you’re doing.
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