COVID-19 Is Treatable and Preventable With Vitamin D: Dr. Robert Malone
COVID-19 can be treated and prevented with vitamin D, according to the pioneer of mRNA vaccine technology and president of the Global COVID Summit, Dr. Robert Malone.
“There are virtually no deaths from this disease in people who have vitamin D levels in their blood above 50 ng/mL [nanograms per milliliter],” Malone said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “There’s actually many studies out now, including double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trials.”
A 2021 meta-analysis study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients found that there was “strong evidence that low D3 is a predictor rather than just a side effect of the [COVID-19] infection” and suggested a serum vitamin D level “above 50 ng/mL to prevent or mitigate new outbreaks due to escape mutations or decreasing antibody activity.”
Malone explains that 50 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D “seems to be the threshold where there’s a big change in mortality” according to the data he and other front-line doctors have looked at.
“Fifty [ng/mL] seems to be the cutoff where the curve goes from one to another, and when you get above that, it appears that virtually there is no mortality from COVID-19,” Malone said.
Other studies have shown that vitamin D has important functions beyond just bone health, which include regulating immune function and inflammation.
As early as 2010, a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial from Japan examining the impact of vitamin D supplementation on the occurrence of seasonal influenza A in children aged 6 to 15 between December 2008 and March 2009, “showed a significant preventative effect against influenza A.”
“Influenza A occurred in 18 of 167 (10.8%) of children in the vitamin D3 group compared with 31 of 167 (18.6%) children in the placebo group,” the authors wrote. “In children with a previous diagnosis of asthma, asthma attacks as a secondary outcome occurred in 2 children receiving vitamin D3 compared with 12 children receiving placebo.”
The participants received 1,200 international units of vitamin D3 daily, with no serious adverse effects, or a placebo.
With COVID-19, the fat-soluble vitamin or hormone has been found to prevent the disease, and reduce mortality and admission to the intensive care unit. People deficient in vitamin D were also found to be 14 times more likely to have severe or critical COVID-19, according to an Israeli study.
Regardless of the growing evidence of the effectiveness of vitamin D, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does not recommend it for COVID-19 because they claim there is not enough data.
“There is insufficient evidence to recommend either for or against the use of vitamin D for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19,” the federal medical research agency wrote, citing only a small Brazilian study that found no significant difference in the length of hospital stay between the vitamin D group and the placebo.
About 240 hospitalized patients with moderate or severe COVID-19 were given either a single large dose of 200,000 international units of vitamin D or a placebo. Researchers said that their findings did “not support the use of a high dose of vitamin D3 for treatment of moderate to severe COVID-19.”
The NIH did mention that the study had several limitations due to its small sample size, enrollment of “participants with a variety of comorbidities and concomitant medications,” and the “time between symptom onset and randomization was relatively long, with patients randomized at a mean of 10.3 days after symptom onset.”
The NIH has not updated its recommendation since April 21, 2021, and did not respond to The Epoch Times’ inquiry on whether it will make an update as more trials have been published.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also not issued guidance to encourage vitamin D intake. In its “how to protect yourself & others” webpage, the CDC only recommends getting the COVD-19 injections, wearing a well-fitted mask, staying six feet away from others, and testing, among other things.
Vitamin D’s positive impact on the immune system, particularly in terms of infection prevention, was first discovered in 2006, according to Malone.
“I had a call out of the blue from a physician, an older retired physician who was an Army doc, he used to work for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences … has intelligence community ties, and he was a long-standing DoD [U.S. Department of Defense] researcher in the area of respiratory disease, particularly influenza,” Malone said.
He added, “To the DoD, they have not forgotten about H1N1 in 1918 because there’s a strong case to be made, it was actually the soldiers coming back from the trenches that brought that virus with them into North America. So the morbidity and mortality associated with influenza is near and dear to the DoD’s heart and has been for decades.”
Malone said that the DoD researcher was involved in a study in the mid-2000s (pdf), analyzing the morbidity and mortality records from the “Department of Defense’s health system for warfighters” to determine what cofactors differentiated those debilitated by influenza from those who simply shrugged it off and continued to function.
“What he discovered was clear, statistically rigorous proof that vitamin D levels explain those differences,” Malone said, adding that the researcher was told by his superiors to present the data to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Throughout the pandemic, Fauci’s message on how to prevent COVID-19 has for the most part been in line with the CDC’s guidelines. But on Sept. 9, 2020, he recommended vitamin D and C for immune health during an Instagram live interview with actress Jennifer Garner.
“So, if a child is deficient, there are two vitamins among the many … for example, if you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending and I do it myself, taking vitamin D supplement,” Fauci said in response to a question on what mothers could do to boost their children’s immune systems. He also recommended giving vitamin C supplements as “it is a good antioxidant.”
Fauci would also share in an email several days later of the “6,000 international units [of vitamin D] per day” he was taking to Kari Hjelt, the head of innovation at Graphene Flagship. Hjelt then forwarded his email exchange with Fauci to John Campbell, a retired nurse educator, who shared it on his YouTube channel.
According to Malone, vitamin D “at sufficient levels, is necessary to support the health, particularly of your T-cell population.” T-cells have two basic functions: they coordinate the immune response and kill virus-infected cells.
Researchers from Denmark knew in 2010 that vitamin D was essential for activating our immune system defenses, and without it, the immune system’s killer T-cells would not be able to react to and fight off serious diseases in the body.
“When a T-cell is exposed to a foreign parthogen, it extends a signaling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,” Dr. Carsten Geisler, professor at the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, said in a press release.
“This means that the T-cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T-cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilize,” he added.
Vitamin D deficiency affects over 1 billion people worldwide, including 42 percent of Americans, with darker complexion having a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency: 82 percent of blacks and 69 percent of Latinos have inadequate levels.
Malone says it is important that people don’t self-administer vitamin D before talking to their doctor and getting a simple blood test to measure the levels of vitamin D in their blood.
“It is important to get your blood levels tested,” Malone said. “You can get toxic from too much vitamin D and different people absorb vitamin D at different levels.”
Vitamin D toxicity, a rare condition, causes an accumulation of calcium in your blood and may cause symptoms that include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, weakness, and high blood pressure. Kidney failure may later occur if calcium is deposited in the organs. Treatment involves stopping the supplements and giving intravenous fluids and certain drugs.
Similar to Malone, Dr. Dennis Walker, a radiologist, says that people taking vitamin D supplements should get their vitamin D levels checked six to eight weeks after beginning the supplement, adding that “for every 5,000 IU of D3 consider 100 mcg of K2” as vitamin K2 “helps to ensure calcium transported by the vitamin D is absorbed by bones rather than deposited in arteries.”
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Monkeypox: Scientists find potential antiviral treatment
Scientists have found a potential antiviral treatment for monkeypox, though they said the disease remains a far less significant risk than Covid.
New research into past outbreaks of monkeypox in the UK identified a patient who had shortened symptoms after being treated with one of two antivirals designed for smallpox.
The study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases looked at seven patients treated for the virus between 2018 and 202.
It comes as the new monkeypox outbreak grew to 71 confirmed in Britain and 85 cases across eight countries in Europe.
Researchers said their study only covered a small sample group and said further investigations around the antiviral treatments were needed.
According to the findings, monkeypox was found within throat and blood samples of the patients. Five of the patients studied spent more than three weeks in isolation – up to 39 days – as they received prolonged positive PCR test results.
However the authors said this does not necessarily point towards airborne infection on a similar level to Covid. The tests used were PCR test which also do not detect infectivity.
“In our cases, it’s been with very close contact in households with children and parents having direct contact with each other rather than the necessary at a distance,” Dr David Porter, on of the authors of the report said.
There are currently no licensed treatements for monkeypox in humans. The only available drugs, identified in the study, were Brincidofovir and Tecovirimat, which have been approved in the USA for the treatment of smallpox in preparation for a potential bioterrorism.
Three of the patients looked at were treated with the antiviral brincidofovir, which was not found to be effective, and one patient treated with Tecovirimat for two weeks who shorter illness duration. One patient experienced a mild relapse 6 weeks after hospital discharge.
Between 2018 and 2019 four of the patients were treated for monkeypox in specialist units in England. Three of the cases were linked to west Africa and the fourth case was found in a healthcare worker who had been exposed to the virus.
Three further cases on monkeypox looked at in the study were reported in 2021 in a family travelling from Nigeria. One of these cases occurred in a child
Researchers noted the cases studied between 2018 and 2021 are not “dissimilar” to those currently being identified in terms of their spread.
The report said: “The disease course of the patients we report on were challenging and resource-intensive to manage, even in the high-income setting of the UK. Monkeypox outbreaks will continue to occur in west and central Africa, and health-care workers around the world must remain vigilant to the possibility of monkeypox in travellers presenting with fever and rash. Our observations in this small series support further research into antivirals to treat this neglected tropical disease.”
At a briefing held by the Science Media Centre on Tuesday, researchers warned against comparing the current outbreak of monkeypox to Covid.
Dr Jake Dunning, consultant in infectious dieases and high consequence infectious diseases at the Royal Free Hospital, said: “Covid as an emerging infection, is far more significant for society than the monkey pox... I think we have to be careful not to equate the two as well, so particularly in terms of transmission and pandemic risk.
“They are very different beasts in that sense. So I don’t want people thinking that just because we’ve had a Covid pandemic, every new emerging infection will also lead to a pandemic.”
Dr Hugh Adler, honorary research fellow at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Specialty Trainee in Infectious Diseases said unlike Covid, monkeypox was a “DNA virus”, which do not evolve rapidly so it is unlikely the current outbreak is a “sudden shift” in the virus’s behaviour
He added: “It’s more likely either a random event and or driven somewhat by human behaviour, in particular that travel is opening more widely again. But from their preliminary genomic data, there is no signal but also on what we know is the biology of monkeypox, where we would not predict that this that it would change that fast.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/monkeypox-antiviral-treatment-b2086206.html
************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
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