Health & Fitness

This article was previously published October 19, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

According to a June 2020 research paper,¹ melatonin^2,3 may be an important adjunct to COVID-19 treatment. Incidentally, while not emphasized, melatonin is an optional addition to the highly effective MATH+ protocol promoted by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC).⁴

President Trump's COVID-19 treatment⁵ was also said to include melatonin supplementation. The authors note that melatonin attenuates several pathological features of the illness, including excessive inflammation, oxidation and an exaggerated immune response resulting in a cytokine storm and acute lung injury (ALI), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and, potentially, death.

"Melatonin, a well-known anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative molecule, is protective against ALI/ARDS caused by viral and other pathogens," the researchers state,⁶ adding:

"Melatonin is effective in critical care patients by reducing vessel permeability, anxiety, sedation use, and improving sleeping quality, which might also be beneficial for better clinical outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

Notably, melatonin has a high safety profile. There is significant data showing that melatonin limits virus-related diseases and would also likely be beneficial in COVID-19 patients."

One of the things that makes melatonin so effective is that it doesn't just act as an antioxidant in and of itself; it also interacts with your body's innate antioxidant system where it recharges glutathione.⁷

High-Dose Melatonin to Combat COVID-19

A recent case series⁸ published in the journal Melatonin Research details how patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia who were given high-dose melatonin as an adjunct therapy to standard of care all improved within four to five days, and all survived.

On average, those given melatonin were discharged from the hospital after 7.3 days, compared to 13 days for those who did not get melatonin. This is far better than the expensive treatment remdesivir, which costs over $3,000 and doesn't produce anywhere near this improvement.

However, the patients were given very large doses of melatonin, 36 mg to 72 mg per day in four divided doses. When used for sleep, you'd typically start with a dose of 0.25 mg and work your way up as needed.

Dr. Richard Neel and colleagues at Little Alsace and Uvalde Urgent Care clinics in Texas are also using high-dose melatonin in combination with vitamin C and vitamin D, and had as of the last week of July 2020 successfully treated more than 400 patients.⁹

"I knew that nothing would work for everyone, but it is working for the majority. It is amazing what melatonin is doing for most patients," Neel told Kayleen Holder, editor of Devine News.¹⁰

Melatonin Inhibits COVID-19-Induced Cytokine Storm

Another paper,¹¹ published in June 2020 in the journal Medical Drug Discoveries, describes the mechanics by which melatonin inhibits the cytokine storm associated with critical SARS-CoV-2 infection. As explained by the authors:¹²

"A causative factor related to the hyper-inflammatory state of immune cells is their ability to dramatically change their metabolism. Similar to cancer cells … immune cells such as macrophages/monocytes under inflammatory conditions abandon mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation for ATP production in favor of cytosolic aerobic glycolysis (also known as the Warburg effect) …

The change to aerobic glycolysis allows immune cells to become highly phagocytic, accelerate ATP production, intensify their oxidative burst and to provide the abundant metabolic precursors required for enhanced cellular proliferation and increased synthesis and release of cytokines …

Because of melatonin's potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, it would normally reduce the highly proinflammatory cytokine storm and neutralize the generated free radicals thereby preserving cellular integrity and preventing lung damage."

Melatonin Plays Important Roles in Mitochondrial Function

Importantly, the Medical Drug Discoveries paper points out that while melatonin was initially thought to be exclusively synthesized in the pineal gland, researchers have now demonstrated that it is actually synthesized in mitochondria, which means melatonin production occurs in most cells, including human lung monocytes and macrophages.

For those of you who might be familiar with melatonin, this is quite surprising as it has been commonly accepted for the past 50 years that the sole source of melatonin was the pineal gland. This is quite an amazing breakthrough to find out it is actually produced in the mitochondria, which are in every cell in your body except your red blood cells.

In healthy cells, melatonin synthesis in mitochondria occurs when the glucose metabolite pyruvate enters the mitochondria. Glucose is a six-carbon molecule and is divided into two three-carbon molecules of pyruvate. Once the pyruvate is inside the mitochondria, it is subsequently metabolized into acetyl-coenzyme A.

Presumably, a low-carb, high-fat diet that produces large amounts of ketones should provide similar benefits as the ketones are directly metabolized to acetyl-coenzyme A. As explained in the Medical Drug Discoveries paper:¹³

"In the absence of acetyl-coenzyme A, mitochondrial melatonin is no longer available to combat the inflammatory response or to neutralize the generated reactive oxygen species and the massive damage that occurs in the respiratory tree resulting in the primary signs of COVID-19 disease.

Importantly, endogenous melatonin production diminishes markedly with age especially in frail older individuals. This is consistent with the more serious nature of a COVID-19 infection in the elderly."

Other research, including a Frontiers of Bioscience paper¹⁴ published in 2007, has pointed out that melatonin helps prevent mitochondrial impairment, energy failure and apoptosis (programmed cell death) in mitochondria damaged by oxidation.

Melatonin may even help regulate gene expression via certain enzymes,¹⁵ and helps regulate autophagy in certain pathological conditions.¹⁶ According to the authors, "Most of the beneficial consequences resulting from melatonin administration may depend on its effects on mitochondrial physiology."¹⁷

Melatonin Helps Protect Against Sepsis

Sepsis (blood poisoning) is another common outcome of an unhealthy immune response to infection, and melatonin may play an important role in preventing this as well. Evidence for this can be found in a Journal of Critical Care paper¹⁸ published in 2010. According to the authors:¹⁹

"Melatonin is an effective anti-inflammatory agent in various animal models of inflammation and sepsis, and its anti-inflammatory action has been attributed to inhibition of nitric oxide synthase with consequent reduction of peroxynitrite formation, to the stimulation of various antioxidant enzymes thus contributing to enhance the antioxidant defense, and to protective effects on mitochondrial function and in preventing apoptosis.

In a number of animal models of septic shock, as well as in patients with septic disease, melatonin reportedly exerts beneficial effects to arrest cellular damage and multiorgan failure …

Apart from action on the local sites of inflammation, melatonin also exerts its beneficial actions through a multifactorial pathway including its effects as immunomodulatory, antioxidant and antiapoptotic agent."

In summary, melatonin appears to reverse septic shock symptoms by:²⁰

• Decreasing synthesis of proinflammatory cytokines
• Preventing lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced oxidative damage, endotoxemia and metabolic alterations
• Suppressing gene expression of the bad form of nitric oxide, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS)
• Preventing apoptosis (cell death)

More recently, a 2019 animal study²¹ in the journal Frontiers in Immunology details how melatonin can protect against polymicrobial sepsis, i.e., sepsis caused by more than one microbial organism. A hallmark of polymicrobial sepsis is severe loss of lymphocytes through apoptosis, resulting in a twofold higher lethality than unimicrobial sepsis (sepsis caused by a single microbe).²²

In this case, melatonin appears to offer protection by having an antibacterial effect on white blood cells called neutrophils. A high neutrophil count is an indicator for infection. According to the authors of the 2019 study:²³

"Melatonin treatment inhibited peripheral tissue inflammation and tissue damage … consequently reducing the mortality of the mice. We found that macrophages and neutrophils expressed melatonin receptors.

Upon depletion of neutrophils, melatonin-induced protection against polymicrobial infection failed in the mice, but melatonin treatment in macrophage-depleted mice attenuated the mice mortality resulting from polymicrobial sepsis …

The data from this study support previously unexplained antiseptic effects of melatonin during a polymicrobial infection and could be potentially useful for human patients with sepsis."

Melatonin's Antiviral Effects

The scientific review paper,²⁴ "Melatonin Potentials Against Viral Infections Including COVID-19: Current Evidence and New Findings," published October 2020 in the Virus Research journal, also summarizes the many potential mechanisms by which melatonin can protect against and ameliorate viral infections.

The authors review research looking at melatonin's beneficial effects against a variety of viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, viral hepatitis, viral myocarditis, Ebola, West Nile virus and dengue virus. Based on these collective findings, they believe melatonin may offer similar protection against SARS-CoV-2.

One mechanistic basis for this relates to melatonin's effects on p21-activated kinases (PAKs), a family of serine and threonine kinases. They explain:²⁵

"In the last decade, PAKs have acquired great attention in medicine due to their contribution to a diversity of cellular functions. Among them, PAK1 is considered as a pathogenic enzyme and its unusual activation could be responsible for a broad range of pathologic conditions such as aging, inflammation, malaria, cancers immunopathology, viral infections, etc.

In a recent study conducted by Oh et.al. (2016), 'Chloroquine' (CQ) (an antimalarial drug used as an experimental medication in COVID-19 treatment protocol) was found to increase the expression of p21 that was downregulated by PAK1 in Th1 cells.

Furthermore, Lu and colleagues have shown that phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), a tumor-suppressing phosphatase, may prevent the coronavirus-induced Ag II-pathological vascular fibrosis through inactivation of PAK1.

Interestingly, melatonin exerts a spectrum of important anti-PAK1 properties in some abnormal conditions such as sleep disturbance, immune system effectiveness reduction, infectious disorders, inflammation, cancer, painful conditions, etc.

It has been proposed that coronaviruses could trigger CK2/RAS-PAK1-RAF-AP1 signaling pathway via binding to ACE2 receptor. Although it is not scientifically confirmed as yet, PAK1-inhibitors could theoretically exert as potential agents for the management of a recent outbreak of COVID-19 infection.

Indeed, Russel Reiter, a leading pioneer in melatonin research, has recently emphasized that melatonin may be incorporated into the treatment of COVID-19 as an alternative or adjuvant."

Melatonin for Viral Infections Including COVID-19

In summary, "Melatonin Potentials Against Viral Infections Including COVID-19: Current Evidence and New Findings" and other research referenced in the list below suggests melatonin may play an important role in SARS-CoV-2 infection by:²⁶

Regulating immune responses and preventing cytokine storms

Quelling inflammation and suppressing oxidative stress27

Combating viral and bacterial infections28

Regulating blood pressure (a risk factor for severe COVID-19)

Improving metabolic defects associated with diabetes and insulin resistance (risk factors for severe COVID-19) via inhibition of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS)

Protecting mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs, which have been shown to ameliorate severe SARS-CoV-2 infection) against injuries and improving their biological activities

Promoting both cell-mediated and humoral immunity

Promoting synthesis of progenitor cells for macrophages and granulocytes, natural killer (NK) cells and T-helper cells, specifically CD4+ cells

Inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasomes29

Melatonin — A Possible Vaccine Adjuvant?

Lastly, "Melatonin Potentials Against Viral Infections Including COVID-19: Current Evidence and New Findings" discusses the potential of using melatonin as a vaccine adjuvant, nothing that:³⁰

"Even if [a COVID-19] vaccine would be established, vaccine efficacy is probably considered to be inferior for the elderly and other high-risk population groups compared to people who are healthy and young. The immune responses to vaccines have been shown to be limited in the aforementioned groups because of a weakened immune system.

Therefore, using immunomodulatory agents such as melatonin as an effective adjuvant besides vaccination may boost the vaccine's effectiveness in patients with both compromised and healthy immune systems.

As above-mentioned, melatonin is capable of enhancing the count of natural killer and CD4+ cells and amplifying the production of cytokines needed for effective vaccine response. Furthermore, sleep deprivation weakens immune response to viral infection, and melatonin has been proved to be a critical factor in improving sleep quality."

Melatonin Works Synergistically With Vitamin D

Interestingly, a paper³¹ published in the May 2020 issue of The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology stresses the synergistic effects between melatonin and vitamin D. Not only does melatonin enhance vitamin D signaling, the two molecules act synergistically to optimize your mitochondrial function.

I've written many articles detailing the importance of vitamin D optimization to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection and more serious COVID-19 illness. The evidence for this is frankly overwhelming, and raising vitamin D levels among the general population may be one of the most important prevention strategies available to us. To learn more, please download my vitamin D report, available for free on stopcovidcold.com. According to the authors of this May 2020 paper:³²

"A deficiency of these molecules has been associated with the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases, including arterial hypertension, neurodegenerative diseases, sleep disorders, kidney diseases, cancer, psychiatric disorders, bone diseases, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes, among others.

During aging, the intake and cutaneous synthesis of vitamin D, as well as the endogenous synthesis of melatonin are remarkably depleted, therefore, producing a state characterized by an increase of oxidative stress, inflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction …

Mitochondrial dysfunction has been related to the etiologies of many complex diseases where overactivation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), vitamin D deficiency and the reduction of melatonin synthesis converge.

In this sense, experimental and clinical evidence indicates that inflammation, oxidative stress, as in mitochondrial dysfunction, are consistent with low levels of melatonin and vitamin D, and also represent risk factors connected with development and maintenance of prevalent acute and chronic pathologies."

Simple Ways to Optimize Your Melatonin and Vitamin D

While there are likely many benefits to supplementing with oral vitamin D3 and melatonin, it makes no sense to do so unless you also optimize your body's own production.

The good news is it's relatively simple and inexpensive to increase your melatonin and vitamin D levels. To optimize your vitamin D, I recommend getting sensible sun exposure on large portions of your body on a regular basis, ideally daily.

If for whatever reason you cannot get sufficient amounts of sun exposure, consider taking a vitamin D3 supplement (along with a little extra vitamin K2 to maintain a healthy ratio between these two nutrients, and magnesium to optimize vitamin D conversion).

I personally have not taken any oral vitamin D for well over 10 years and my levels are typically over 70 ng/mL, even in the winter, but as I am now older than 65, I have started taking sublingual melatonin even though I sleep in pitch dark and get bright sun exposure around 85% of the time during the day.

Optimizing your melatonin production starts with getting plenty of bright sunlight during the day, as this helps "set" your circadian clock. Then, as the evening wears on and the sun sets, you'll want to avoid bright lighting.

Blue light from electronic screens and LED light bulbs is particularly problematic and inhibits melatonin the most. If you need lighting, opt for incandescent light bulbs, candles or salt lamps. The blue light from electronic screens can be counteracted by installing blue-blocking software such as Iris,³³ or wearing blue-blocking glasses.

My decision to personally use melatonin supplementation makes even more sense now that we understand that melatonin is not only produced in the pineal gland (which would benefit from circadian optimization), but also in our mitochondria. So, it appears that additional melatonin could serve as a useful adjunct in modulating your immune response.

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Chaos is brewing as Americans face unprecedented injection mandates that order them to comply or risk losing their jobs or freedom to partake in education and society. In a Full Measure report, host and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson described the resulting “debate over freedom, science and government control,” which is creating a sharp divide across the U.S.

“Covid-19 vaccine mandates have set up the ultimate showdown,” she said. “… Already, there are mass firings, resignations and lawsuits. Now, a national mandate is on the way. Never before has the federal government mandated vaccination for such a large segment of society.”¹

Legal Challenges Against Vax Mandates Mount

September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that would require executive branch federal employees and federal contractors to get a COVID-19 shot by December 8; he pushed the deadline forward November 5, 2021, to January 4, 2022, for full implementation.² With the deadline approaching, 11 U.S. states quickly sued the federal government in order to block the mandate, calling it an unlawful, unconstitutional violation of federal procurement law.³

Indiana noted Thursday, November 4, 2021, that they would file three separate lawsuits:⁴ one against the mandate for federal contractors; the second one against OSHA; and the third one will be against mandates for nursing homes workers, hospitals and other agencies that accept Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Meanwhile, November 5, 2021, OSHA issued its first notification⁵ on its plans to enforce Biden’s order, with a list of “frequently asked questions.” Interestingly, the vaccine mandate and testing will not apply to employees working exclusively from home, or who work entirely outdoors, even though they’ll be counted toward an employer’s workforce number.

A UC Hastings professor who is often call upon to discuss vaccine law, Dorit Reiss, told 10News San Diego⁶ that the reason OSHA isn’t enforcing the mandates on remote or outside workers is because OSHA doesn’t have the legal authority to do so.

“The agency can only impose emergency standards on issues where workers are in ‘grave danger,’” Reiss said. “OSHA is saying we have really good evidence that COVID-19 is a grave danger to people in indoor places. We don’t have the same kind of evidence that it’s a great danger to people working remotely, not working with other employees, or working outside.”

In New York, which issued an injection mandate that New Yorkers must comply with in order to visit restaurants, bars and gyms, Mayor Bill de Blasio stated, “If you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated. It’s time.”⁷ In the real world, though, Attkisson found that only one of four restaurants they visited actually asked them for proof of vaccination.

New York hospital workers, who are also mandated to get the shot, are also resisting, with 72,000 still choosing not to get a COVID-19 injection. Across the U.S., everyone from health care workers to police to professional athletes are standing up for their health freedom. Attkisson reported:⁸

“There are already countless legal challenges moving through court. Teachers, police, and other first responders around the country, including 500 LA firefighters. And it’s about to get much bigger. Millions of federal workers and contractors are counting down toward a deadline to get vaccinated. And the mandate is about to expand to all private employers with 100 or more workers. About 100 million people, in all.”

Businesses Could Be Fined $700K for Violating Vax Mandates

Attkisson is referring to a White House announcement in September 2021 that companies with 100 or more employees will have to ensure staff have gotten a COVID-19 injection or be tested regularly for COVID-19. Fines on employers that do not comply could run as high as $70,000 for serious infractions and $700,000 for each “willful” or repeated violation.⁹

Currently, the fines only apply to businesses with 100 or more employees, but there’s nothing stopping them from changing it to 50 employees — or one employee. Anything could happen at this point. It’s worth noting that, at this point, the mandate doesn’t actually exist.

Speaking with The Federalist in October 2021,, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration explained, “There is nothing there yet that gives employers any mandate. The president made an announcement on this asking OSHA to do it, but we’ve not yet seen anything come from it yet.”¹⁰

This may be why more lawsuits haven’t been filed to challenge the mandate — there’s nothing to challenge just yet. Still, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a bill — the No Taxation Without Congressional Consent Act — September 30, 2021, that would prohibit the federal government from imposing a fine, fee or tax on individuals or businesses for violating a COVID-19 vaccine mandate issued by OSHA or other agencies.¹¹

As it stands, less than 2% of U.S. businesses will be affected by the mandate, as more than 98% of U.S. businesses have fewer than 100 employees, exempting them from the mandate. However, those 2% account for about two-thirds of U.S. employees, so they’re a sizeable minority.¹²

Many of these large corporations have already put injection mandates into place or were planning to. The “mandate” announcement allows these mega-corporations to mandate the jabs without having to be the bad guy. In another instance, Los Angeles recently approved one of the strictest mandates in the U.S. and will require a vaccine passport to enter indoor public spaces like shopping malls, museums, restaurants, spas and other locations.¹³

In San Francisco, city officials announced as soon as the shot was approved them that children aged 5 years and older will now need a vaccine passport to enter restaurants and grocery stores.¹⁴

California also became the first U.S. state to require students in kindergarten to grade 12 to receive COVID-19 shots following full FDA approval.¹⁵ Council President Nury Martinez called the move “a necessary step towards returning to normalcy,” but there’s nothing “normal” about presenting proof of an injection to go about your daily life.¹⁶

Will Mandates Further Hinder Economic Recovery?

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called the mandate an “abuse of power” that would only worsen labor shortages and supply chain woes, further hindering economic recovery.¹⁷ Yet, speaking with Attkisson, Lawrence Gostin, head of the World Health Organization Center on Global Health Law and an adviser to the Biden administration, said the opposite — that vaccine mandates would boost the economy.

“Many people haven't been to work for a year and a half. And so, they're coming in, and they want to feel safe. And they're not going to feel safe unless you have a largely vaccinated population around you,” he said, adding, “I actually do think that it's about protection primarily, but it will have economic benefits as well.”¹⁸

Sen. Ron Johnson, however, told Attkisson, “It's going to be a disaster for our health care industry and for many segments of our economy.” He explained:¹⁹

“Before President Biden announced the coercive, freedom robbing mandate from the federal government, hospitals were mandating vaccines. I've been hearing from their doctors, from their nurses, people that are heroes. They read the science, they see the study out of Israel that says that natural immunity is 13 to 27 times more effective than the vaccine.²⁰ They're treating the injuries. They're not going to get vaccinated.

They don't want to lose their job. They love their jobs, they love taking care of patients. But what they’re going to do is they're going to be terminated and then we are going to experience an enormous loss of manpower and experience and expertise in our healthcare system. It's already occurring.

It’s hard to quantify exactly how many have already quit or been fired over vaccine mandates. 600 at United Airlines. Teachers. First responders. Military troops. More than 3000 among a small sampling of hospital systems. There are already staff shortages and bed cuts at some hospitals.”

No Exemptions for Natural Immunity

The other glaring issue is that mandates make no exceptions for people with natural immunity. It’s the elephant in the room that the mainstream COVID-19 narrative refuses to acknowledge. A sizable number of Americans already have natural immunity from a prior COVID-19 infection.

How can you threaten a person with fines or loss of employment to get an injection for a disease to which they’re already immune? This is likely to prompt more than a few lawsuits, especially since it’s been shown that natural immunity may protect you significantly better than an injection.²¹

This is one of Rep. Thomas Massie’s top complaints with vaccine mandates. “I guess my top gripe is, they're unscientific,” he told Attkisson, noting:²²

“The latest study shows that you're 27 times less likely to contract symptomatic Covid if you have immunity from prior infection, versus having the vaccine and never having been infected before. So why would you force those people to take the vaccine? It doesn't make any sense.

… Ultimately, I have hope that the Supreme Court is going to find this illegal like they did with CDCs eviction moratorium. But in the meantime, Joe Biden is going to be able to bluff many corporations. He's targeting 100 million Americans, those are their numbers. He may, without ever promulgating this rule, effectively get 50 or 80 million of them to comply.”

Experts also disagree about booster shots, and CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky overruled the CDC’s expert panel and went ahead with the recommendation to issue a booster shot for adults at high risk of infection. This is only the second time in the CDC’s history that its own ACIP advisory panel has been overruled.²³

Meanwhile, mounting concerns are being raised regarding shots for children, with Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology, among those who have stated that the risk of damage is greater from the injection than from the disease itself, especially among males.²⁴

Also being ignored by the mainstream narrative is the fact that those who’ve received the injections can still be infected by, and transmit, SARS-CoV-2. As Johnson said, “There's no logical rationale for the mandate. We know that vaccinated individuals can get infected, they can transmit the disease. So what benefit are we getting from segregating our society, vaccinated versus unvaccinated?”²⁵

Vaccine Makers Are the Undisputed Winners

Who’s profiting from this increasing division of American society? Big Pharma, including Pfizer and Moderna. “As the fight continues, undisputed winners in the whole mess are the vaccine makers,” Attkisson said. “Even before the national mandate, Moderna was expected to pull in $19 billion in taxpayer money for selling Covid-19 shots this year. Pfizer: $26 billion.”²⁶

Pfizer’s revenue is up 134% from last year, and it expects to bring in $36 billion by the end of 2021, and that’s just for its COVID-19 shots. All in, the company is expecting 2021 revenue of between $81 billion and $82 billion.²⁷

As for whether legal challenges will be able to stop the onslaught of mandates, Johnson told Attkisson that he’s hopeful they will, but with a major caveat: “I believe the challenges to federal mandates will succeed, but probably too late, it'll probably be too late. The damage will have already been done.”²⁸

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October 26, 2021, Global Research published an interview with Dr. Peter McCullough, in which he reviews and explains the findings of a September 2021 study published in the journal Toxicology Reports, which states:¹

“A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.

The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.”

McCullough has impeccable academic credentials. He’s an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. He also has a master’s degree in public health and is known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States, in addition to being the editor of two medical journals.

Authors Defend Their Paper

Not surprisingly, the Toxicology Reports paper has received scathing critique from certain quarters. Still, corresponding author Ronald Kostoff told Retraction Watch that the criticism has actually been “an extremely small fraction” of the overall response, which by and large has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Kostoff went on to say:²

“Given the blatant censorship of the mainstream media and social media, only one side of the COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ narrative is reaching the public. Any questioning of the narrative is met with the harshest response …

I went into this with my eyes wide open, determined to identify the truth, irrespective of where it fell. I could not stand idly by while the least vulnerable to serious COVID-19 consequences were injected with substances of unknown mid and long-term safety.

We published a best-case scenario. The real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario, and could be the subject of a future paper.

What these results show is that we 1) instituted mass inoculations of an inadequately-tested toxic substance with 2) non-negligible attendant crippling and lethal results to 3) potentially prevent a relatively small number of true COVID-19 deaths. In other words, we used a howitzer where an accurate rifle would have sufficed!”

COVID Jab Campaign Has Had No Discernible Impact

Certainly, data very clearly show the mass “vaccination” campaign has not had a discernible impact on global death rates. On the contrary, in some cases the death toll shot up after the COVID shots became widely available. You can browse through covid19.healthdata.org³ to see this for yourself. Several examples are also included at the very beginning of the video.

This trend has also been confirmed in a September 2021 study⁴ published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. It found COVID-19 case rates are completely unrelated to vaccination rates.

Using data available as of September 3, 2021, from Our World in Data for cross-country analysis, and the White House COVID-19 Team data for U.S. counties, the researchers investigated the relationship between new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of the population that had been fully vaccinated.

Sixty-eight countries were included. Inclusion criteria included second dose vaccine data, COVID-19 case data and population data as of September 3, 2021. They then computed the COVID-19 cases per 1 million people for each country, and calculated the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.

According to the authors, there was “no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last seven days.” If anything, higher vaccination rates were associated with a slight increase in cases. According to the authors:⁵

“[T]he trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”

The Kostoff Analysis

Getting back to the Toxicology Reports paper,⁶ which is being referring to as “the Kostoff analysis,” McCullough says the analysis is definitely making news in clinical medicine. The paper focuses on two factors: assumptions and determinism.

Determinism describes how likely something is. For example, if a person takes a COVID shot, it’s 100% certain they got the injection. It’s not 50% or 75%. It’s an absolute certainty. As a result, that person has a 100% chance of being exposed to whatever risk is associated with that shot.

On the other hand, if a person says no to the injection, it’s not 100% chance they’ll get COVID-19, let alone die from it. You have a less than 1% chance of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and getting sick. So, it’s 100% deterministic that taking the shot exposes you to the risks of the shot, and less than 1% deterministic that you’ll get COVID if you don’t take the shot.

The other part of the equation is the assumptions, which are based on calculations using available data, such as pre-COVID death statistics and death reports filed with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reports System (VAERS).

Mortality Data

As noted by McCullough, two reports have detailed COVID jab death data, showing 50% of deaths occur within 24 hours and 80% occur within the first week. In one of these reports, 86% of deaths were found to have no other explanation aside from a vaccine adverse event. McCullough also cites a Scandinavian study that concluded about 40% of post-jab deaths among seniors in assisted living homes are directly due to the injection. He also cites other eye-opening figures:

• The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports having more than 30,000 spontaneous reports of either hospitalizations and/or deaths among the fully vaccinated
• Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show 300,000 vaccinated CMS recipients have been hospitalized with breakthrough infections
• 60% of seniors over age 65 hospitalized for COVID-19 have been vaccinated

COVID Shots Are ‘Failing Wholesale’

“When we put all these data together, we have clear-cut science that the vaccines are failing wholesale,” McCullough says. The shots are particularly useless in seniors.

Again, based on a best-case conservative scenario, seniors are five times more likely to die from the shot than they are from the natural infection. This scenario includes the assumption that the PCR test is accurate and reported COVID deaths were in fact due to COVID-19, which we know is not the case, and the assumption that the shots actually prevent death, which we have no proof of.

All things considered, you are FAR better off taking your chances with the natural infection, as McCullough says. The Kostoff analysis also does not take into account the fact that there are safe and effective treatments.

It bases its assumptions on the notion that there aren’t any. It also doesn’t factor in the fact that the COVID shots are utterly ineffective against the Delta and other variants. If you take into account vaccine failure against variants and alternative treatments, it skews the analysis even further toward natural infection being the safest alternative.

FDA and CDC Should Not Run Vaccine Programs

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC claim not a single death following COVID inoculation was caused by the shot, they should not be the ones making that determination, as they are both sponsoring the vaccination campaign.

They have an inherent bias. When you conduct a trial, you would never allow the sponsor to tell you whether the product was the cause of death, because you know they’re biased.

What we need is an external group, a critical event committee, to analyze the deaths being reported, as well as a data safety monitoring board. These should have been in place from the start, but were not.

Had they been, the program would most likely have been halted in February, as by then the number of reported deaths, 186, already exceeded the tolerable threshold of about 150 (based on the number of injections given). Now, we’re well over 17,000.⁷ There’s no normal circumstance under which that would ever be allowed. 

“The CDC and FDA are running the [vaccination] program. They are NOT the people who typically run vaccine programs,” McCullough says. “The drug companies run vaccine programs.

When Pfizer, Moderna, J&J ran their randomized trials, we didn’t have any problems. They had good safety oversight. They had data safety monitoring boards. The did OK. I mean I have to give the drug companies [credit].

But the drug companies are now just the suppliers of the vaccine. Our government agencies are now just running the program. There’s no external advisory committee. There’s no data safety monitoring board. There’s no human ethics committee. NO one is watching out for this!

And so, the CDC and FDA pretty clearly have their marching orders: ‘Execute this program; the vaccine is safe and effective.’ They’re giving no reports to Americans. No safety reports. We needed those once a month. They haven’t told doctors which is the best vaccine, which is the safest vaccine.

They haven’t told us what groups are to watch out for. How to mitigate risks. Maybe there are drug interactions. Maybe it’s people with prior blood clotting problems or diabetes. They’re not telling us anything!

They literally are blindsiding us, and with no transparency, and Americans now are scared to death. You can feel the tension in America. People are walking off the job. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they don’t want to die of the vaccine! It’s very clear. They say, ‘Listen, I don’t want to die. That’s the reason I’m not taking the vaccine.’ It’s just that clear.”

Bradford Hill Criteria Are Met — COVID Jabs Cause Death

McCullough goes on to explain the Bradford Hill criterion for causation, which is one of the ways by which we can actually determine that, yes, the shots are indeed killing people. We’re not dealing with coincidence.

“The first question we’d ask is: ‘Does the vaccine have a mechanism of action, a biological mechanism of action, that can actually kill a human being?’ And the answer is yes! because the vaccines all use genetic mechanisms to trick the body into making the lethal spike protein of the virus.

It is very conceivable that some people take up too much messenger RNA; they produce a lethal spike protein in sensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So, it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal.

Someone could have a fatal blood clot. They could have fatal myocarditis. The FDA has official warnings of myocarditis. They have warnings on blood clots. They have warnings on a fatal neurologic condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome. So, the FDA warnings, the mechanism of action, clearly say it’s possible.

The second criteria is: ‘Is it a large effect?’ And the answer is yes! This is not a subtle thing. It’s not 151 versus 149 deaths. This is 15,000 deaths. So, it’s a very large effect size, a large effect.

The third [criteria] is: ‘Is it internally consistent?’ Are you seeing other things that could potentially be fatal in VAERS? Yes! We’re seeing heart attacks. We’re seeing strokes. We’re seeing myocarditis. We’re seeing blood clots, and what have you. So, it’s internally consistent.

‘Is it externally consistent?’ That’s the next criteria. Well, if you look in the MHRA, the yellow card system in England, the exact same thing has been found. In the EudraVigilance system in [Europe] the exact same thing’s been found.

So, we have actually fulfilled all of the Bradford Hill criteria. I’ll tell you right now that COVID-19 vaccine is, from an epidemiological perspective, causing these deaths or a large fraction.”

Zero Tolerance for Elective Drugs Causing Death

There may be cases in which a high risk of death from a drug might be acceptable. If you have a terminal incurable disease, for example, you may be willing to experiment and take your chances. Under normal circumstances however, lethal drugs are not tolerated.

After five suspected deaths, a drug will receive a black box warning. At 50 deaths, it will be removed from the market. Considering COVID-19 has a less than 1% risk of death across age groups, the tolerance for a deadly remedy is infinitesimal. At over 17,000 reported deaths, which in real numbers may exceed 212,000,⁸ the COVID shots far surpass any reasonable risk to protect against symptomatic COVID-19. As noted by McCullough:

“There is zero tolerance for electively taking a drug or a new vaccine and then dying! There’s zero tolerance for that. People don’t weigh it out and say, ‘Oh well, I’ll take my chances and die.’ And I can tell you, the word got out about vaccines causing death in early April [2021], and by mid-April the vaccination rates in the United States plummeted …

We hadn’t gotten anywhere near our goals. Remember, President Biden set a goal [of 70% vaccination rate] by July 1. We never got there because Americans were frightened by their relatives, people in their churches and their schools dying after the vaccine.

They had heard about it, they saw it. There was an informal internet survey done several months ago, where 12% of Americans knew somebody who had died after the vaccine.

I’m a doctor. I’m an internist and cardiologist. I just came from the hospital … I had a woman die of the COVID-19 vaccine … She had shot No. 1. She had shot No. 2. After shot No. 2, she developed blood clots throughout her body. She required hospitalization. She required intravenous blood thinners. She was ravaged. She had neurologic damage.

After that hospitalization, she was in a walker. She came to my office. I checked for more blood clots. I found more blood clots. I put her back on blood thinners. I saw her about a month later. She seemed like she was a little better. Family was really concerned. The next month I got called by the Dallas Coroner office saying she’s found dead at home.

Most of us don’t have any problem with vaccines; 98% of Americans take all the vaccines … I think most people who are still susceptible would take a COVID vaccine if they knew they weren’t going to die of it or be injured. And because of these giant safety concerns, and the lack of transparency, we’re at an impasse.

We’ve got a very labor-constrained market. We’ve got people walking off the job. We’ve got planes that aren’t going to fly, and it’s all because our agencies are not being transparent and honest with America about vaccine safety.”

Early Treatment Is Crucial, Vaxxed or Not

As noted by McCullough, the vast majority of patients require hospitalization for COVID-19 is because they’ve not received any treatment and the infection has been allowed free reign for days on end.

“To this day, the patients who get hospitalized are largely those who receive no early care at home,” he says. “They’re either denied care or they don’t know about it, and they end up dying.

The vast majority of people who die, die in the hospital; they don’t die at home. And the reason why they end up in the hospital, it’s typically two weeks of lack of treatment. You can’t let a fatal illness brew for two weeks at home with no treatment, and then start treatment very late in the hospital. It’s not going to work.

There’s been a very good set of analyses, one in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases … that showed, day by day, one loses the opportunity of reducing the hospitalization when monoclonal antibodies are delayed … No doctor should be considered a renegade when they order FDA [emergency use authorized] monoclonal antibody. The monoclonal antibodies are just as approved as the vaccines.

I just had a patient over the weekend, fully vaccinated, took the booster. A month after the booster she went on a trip to Dubai. She just came back, and she got COVID-19! … I got her a monoclonal antibody infusion that day. [The following day] she started the sequence of multidrug therapy for COVID-19. I am telling you, she is going to get through this illness in a few days …

Podcaster Joe Rogan just went through this. Governor Abbott was also a vaccine failure. He went through it. Former President Trump went through it. Americans should see the use of monoclonal antibodies in high risk patients, followed by drugs in an oral sequenced approach. This is standard of care!

It is supported by the Association of Physicians and Surgeons, the Truth for Health Foundation, the American Front Line Doctors, and the Front Line Critical Care Consortium. This is not renegade medicine. This is what patients should have. This is the correct thing! …

If we can’t get the monoclonal antibodies, we certainly use hydroxychloroquine, supported by over 250 studies, ivermectin, supported by over 60 studies, combined with azithromycin or doxycycline, inhaled budesonide … full-dose aspirin … nutraceuticals including zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin, NAC … we do oral and nasal decontamination with povidone-iodine.

In acutely sick patients we do it every four hours, [and it] massively reduces the viral load … Fortunately, we have enough doctors now and enough patient awareness, patients who … understand that early treatment is viable, is necessary, and it should be executed.”

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