Cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough recently lectured on COVID-19 via the Optimist media platform. Held in the Bahamas, McCullough presented a lecture titled “COVID-19 Vaccine Safety and Efficacy and the Urgent Need for Early Ambulatory Treatment.” Considered a controversial figure by some in the mainstream and a hero by others following the COVID-19 early treatment movement, the key to the advancement of life sciences is scientific debate and even dissension at times for a diverse array of views and analyses to inform and advance the topic.
One of the first advocates for early treatment and expanded protocols using repurposed therapies as well as pharmaceuticals when available, McCullough was introduced as a “global phenomenon” by the conference host in the Bahamas at 32:15 Optimist Bahamas Live Stream - YouTube in the event published on YouTube.
The Texas-based, highly published cardiologist has created controversy as he hasn’t succumbed to a subordinated, passive role during the pandemic. He has paid with former employers, giving up a very comfortable upper-middle-class existence for taking what he believes is an important stand. A practicing internist and cardiologist, McCullough spends half the time seeing patients and the other half of his time as an investigator and author.
When COVID-19 hit Dr. McCullough was on a couple of task forces at the start of the pandemic and right away wanted to find ways to treat patients yet he found doctors seemed paralyzed probably based on fear of infection.
McCullough felt a dangerous precedent of not doing anything to care for the patient and the rest has been history. In this lecture, McCullough introduces some historical events.
For example, he introduced mass vaccination starting with the swine flu vaccination in 1976. A quarter of Americans were vaccinated and upon twenty-five deaths according to the doctor (ultimately 33) and the vaccine program was stopped. McCullough believes it is “unacceptable in American society” to give vaccines electively and have patients die. Of course, one could argue that the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst in a century, is markedly different from the Swine flu crisis in 1976 with over 1 million deaths in America alone.
TS News reviewed the incident. During this vaccination initiative by December 15, 1976, reported cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) impacted vaccinated patients in at least ten states. On December 16, the government placed a one-month suspension of the vaccination program called by CDC Director David Sencer.
According to some sources, three people that received the vaccine died of heart attacks right after receiving the vaccine at the same Pittsburgh clinic sparking an investigation and recall of a particular vaccine batch. However, the CDC notably declared them not related to the vaccine. A BBC report emphasized at least three deaths and that the lessons learned from the Swine flu vaccination should be heeded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A chronology of the Swine flu crisis acknowledged many more possible fatalities connected to the mass inoculation initiative—totaling 33 deaths of people after receiving the vaccines. Yet the government appeared to disagree with any connection to this day.
Writing for Slate Rebecca Onion reported that the swine flu mass vaccination debacle could be a factor that fueled a growing anti-vaccine movement.
The CDC’s William Foege reported that the incidence of GBS was 4-times as high in swine flu vaccinated people than those not receiving the Merck-produced vaccine. President Gerald Ford agreed with suspending the mass vaccination program while standing behind the decision to initiate the mass immunization program. The CDC’s Sencer was soon replaced by a new Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. And the immunization program was not reinstated. One must wonder if there were no deaths connected to the vaccine why wasn’t the program reinstated.
TS News suggests that discussing these challenging issues absolutely doesn’t make one “anti-vaccine”—this is often employed as a smear tactic used by political, economic, and ideological players and forces with a particular agenda to discredit a counterpoint of view often via ad hominem attacks.
This media for example is pro-vaccine and repeatedly reports on the fact that the current COVID-19 vaccines are helping to reduce hospitalization and death while we call out the challenge areas (e.g., potential durability issues and the concern that a high number of adverse events, although not acknowledged as associated with the products, may in fact be connected.
Mass Eradication of SARS-CoV-2 via Vaccination—A Dream?
McCullough suggests that many public health officials essentially “dream” of a vaccine that wipes out a pathogen as was the case with polio. However, McCullough argues that with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19 “the one thing I think we learned relatively quickly is it’s not like polio, it’s not an enterovirus in that we will not get to zero cases. So this idea of getting to zero cases is a fool's errand in my view. Because the virus is sufficiently contagious, it’s a respiratory virus; we don’t get to zero cases of flu, we don’t get to zero cases of pneumococcal pneumonia or zero cases of mycoplasma pneumonia so since when do we declare zero cases.”
McCullough thinks this assumption or paradigm comes from the brief public health experience with SARS-COV-1 involving China and some cities in Canada where it was around for 90 days and it kind of “burned itself out” declared the doctor. Thus, “we did get to zero cases’ because the body's immunity was so good,'' speculated the doctor.
Noting that SARS-CoV-1 came in and out in 90 days and McCullough suggested that perhaps public health officials and researchers came to the conclusion that for SARS-CoV-2 we are basically going to get into zero cases by locking down society, airplanes, and travel, or “put a lid on” and ultimately eradicate the pathogen till it’s all but gone.
While critical of this current batch of vaccines, McCullough is not an anti-vaxxer by any means, in fact for much of his career he has operated in the heart of mainstream medicine, often collaborating with industry as an investigator. Thus, while many that are in the mainstream today that align with the assumption that SARS-CoV-2 can be eradicated completely with the vaccine (this would be the impetus for vaccine mandates for example), a minority of critics, perhaps growing in numbers, suggest the vaccine should be used more in a targeted intervention for higher risk cohorts. Some others suggest avoiding usage, despite compelling data that the vaccines do protect from severe disease and death better than no vaccine.
Of course just because McCullough’s views don’t sync with the mainstream of medicine at this stage of the pandemic doesn’t mean that he is fully or partially incorrect in his analysis. Proper science advances due to intellectual conflict, debate, argument, even at times dissention. While McCullough could be incorrect, he could also be correct, even if just partially, and in fact, with the current vaccination track record, while this media believes that they (the COVID-19 vaccines) have helped reduce hospitalization and death, they haven’t fared nearly as well stopping disease transmission. This fact is on display across heavily immunized nations going through record surges of cases and in some places such as New Zealand and South Korea recently, deaths. Breakthrough infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are increasingly reported with mutating pathogens that better evade vaccine-induced antibodies.
TS News asks Is it possible for the line of critical physicians such as McCullough to find common ground among other physicians and researchers moving forward? Isn’t it time for a real, earnest, and honest debate on the facts, as uncomfortable as they may be, less the politics and vested interests? This means looking at the good and the challenges associated with the vaccines. That’s how science can truly advance. But perhaps there’s too much politics, ideology, and vested interests across all parties for any common ground? That would be unfortunate.
Follow the link to listen to the McCullough presentation—and remember, diversity of opinion and thought is vital to not only the advancement of science but also a healthy democracy.
