My Interview: Dr. Peter McCullough Discusses COVID, the Future, and Returning to Normal

Interview with Dr. McCullough nearly a year ago still resonates

Katy Grimes

In a brand new interview with the California Globe, Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist and epidemiologist, and one of America’s leading physicians on the early treatment of COVID-19, discusses getting back to normal, natural immunity, asymptomatic people, vaccines, schools, teachers and children, in conjunction with California's COVID policies.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently extended California’s Second Readopted COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard and it will remain in place through April 14, 2022.

We touched on the ongoing state of emergency.

Dr. McCullough, who has 46 peer-reviewed publications on COVID,  says “Natural immunity is real, and asymptomatic people should not get tested.” We asked him to explain.

"Well, I think they are intentionally not recognizing natural immunity in order to push the mass vaccination agenda," Dr. McCullough said. "Natural immunity was recognized as an exclusion for the vaccine, as it should be. In the randomized trials for the vaccines, the natural immune were excluded, and they should always be excluded."

"Since they have not been fairly excluded from public trials, my only explanation is it is an intentional move to basically force the vaccine on a group of people who do not need it."

He explained that with the alpha, gamma and delta variants, the naturally immune did not get the illness twice. "The Omicron variant did break through the vaccinated and naturally immune. Omicron is a very mild illness." He said even some of his advanced patients, 90 year olds with heart and lung diseases, made it through Omicron fine.

As for asymptomatic people, Dr. McCullough says they should not be tested. "Asymptomatic people do not spread the illness," he said. Dr. McCullough said there are two good papers by CAO and Madewell showing the COVID tests are not cleared by the FDA for asymptomatic screening. "The FDA doesn't endorse it. The CDC doesn't endorse it. The WHO doesn't endorse it. So no one should be getting asymptomatic testing. It should only be done as a diagnostic and for those acutely ill with COVID symptoms."

"I never advise my patients to do asymptomatic testing," McCullough added. "Even now, we just do COVID testing when we think there is some clinical question to be answered. And Omicron is basically a viral cold, so common at this time."

We asked if this isn't usually considered "cold and flu season." Dr. McCullough said it is, and notably, reports are showing that Omicron patients aren't coming close to needing hospitalization. "It can be easily managed with simple remedies at home," he said.

With California teachers staging sick-outs and schools closing down, we said children are being blamed for spreading COVID.

"Students have never been a major vector" [for COVID] Dr. McCullough said. "There were no school outbreaks even in the first year," he said. "And even in the pandemic and second year, there have been no major outbreaks."

"I think it was appropriate to keep kids out of school a few weeks to let the Omicron settle down," he said. "It's going to be about a 6-week outbreak and will settle down. School teachers have a wonderful track record of a safe position where the children act as immunologic buffers - they don't give COVID to the teachers."

The latest guidance from the California Department of Public Health on January 5, 2022, requires face coverings in all indoor public settings, regardless of vaccination status, through February 15, 2022. Dr. McCullough said "there have been over one dozen studies of general masking which have shown it is basically not effective. I think the only people that need masks... I am a cardiologist and I wear a mask with patients."

"Dentists, dental hygienists - and we wear them in the operating room. It's not to prevent the spread of COVID, but it stops sneezes or coughs," Dr. McCullough added. "But general masks don't work."

He noted that epidemiologic curves show even with masks worn for two years, we have more COVID now than we had before.

"It's obvious masks have failed. It's a hopeless endeavor, Masks can be worn for other reasons, but people shouldn't wear a mask to protect them from COVID. People have gotten COVID wearing masks," he added.

"How much herd immunity have we lost for those things that were common before COVID-19?" the Globe asked. "That's an interesting question. I think maybe we've had a reduction in other illnesses. I don't think necessarily much," he said. "There was a misdiagnosis with influenza because of the CDC PCR test," Dr. McCullough said.

"With COVID-19, we had these herd immunity estimates thinking we were going to get to zero COVID," said McCullough. "But then Omicron broke through. Basically it's irrelevant. This is like any other common cold. And we don't declare 'herd immunity' for the common cold. We just sort of expect about 4 to 8 colds a year - children get about 8 and adults get about 4."

The Globe asked Dr. McCullough about some in the media calling for deploying the National Guard to keep the unvaccinated at home.

"My first point is the majority of Americans who took the vaccines, took them more than 6 months ago. All of the manufacturers, the FDA, everyone agrees the vaccines don't last," Dr. McCullough said. "Effectively, the whole nation is unvaccinated at this point in time. So I don't know how they are going to keep everyone at home."

He continued: "If someone took a vaccine in January of last year, and someone didn't take a vaccine last year, there's no difference between those two people right now. So I don't see how they can possibly make a distinction based on the outdated administration of the vaccine."

He said the vaccine had poor coverage of the Delta variant, with only 20% vaccine efficacy against Delta. "A recent study from Denmark and the British Health Agency shows zero coverage for Omicron. So at this point in time, the next vaccine mandate should be dropped and the vaccine should be pulled off the market. It doesn't cover Omicron, and we're at 95% Omicron now."

The Globe asked if COVID PCR tests can test for Delta and Omicron.

"They just test if there's SARS COVID 2 present there," Dr. McCullough said. "We should be doing PCR tests at a cycle threshold at a limit of 28, plus antigen testing to confirm. There's too little diagnostic accuracy above that."

"There's just a frenzy of testing going on with the home tests, clinic tests and right now we are just telling people to use over-the-counter remedies anyway," he said.

Getting back to natural immunity, the Globe asked why antibody tests were not administered before a vaccine was given.

"Antibody tests before a vaccine would make sense if a vaccine was safe and effective," Dr. McCullough said. "But it turned out we never had vaccines that were safe and effective. I don't think they really were supportible at any point through the program."

Of the 800+ children in the U.S. who died from/with COVID, Dr. McCullough said his understanding is that all had terminal conditions - end stage lung and heart conditions. "If there's anything to learn about children is COVID-19 should be treated at home," McCullough said. "I'm not aware of any case where they treated at home and required hospitalization."

Reports across the state and in parts of the country about increasing hospitalizations from COVID patients, Dr. McCullough questions the veracity of these. "I don't think any of those reports are trustworthy at this point in time," he said. "There's no studies in the peer-reviewed literature or any type of adjudicated hospital data to suggest there's a problem whatsoever."

"I'm in a major medical center today, in a major city in the country (Dallas), and there's no problem."

The Globe asked where the resistance is to call the pandemic an endemic. "I don't think the federal response has been competent," Dr. McCullough said. "In fact, on January 24, 2022, there will be Senate proceedings led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to really go over the lessons of the pandemic and give America a second opinion."

"I just don't think we've had competent public personnel in place," he added.

Of ongoing school closures, children distance learning, and now reports of significant learning loss from the last two years, Dr. McCullough said "Omicron is no different than a common cold, so a child shouldn't be any more fearful of it than having the next cold - it will be indistinguishable."

With threats of never ending school closures from cold and flu outbreaks, Dr. McCullough said "I'm just concerned about poor decision making by school leaders, including the shutdown last year which was unjustified."

"After the Omicron outbreak, reopen and stay reopened," McCullough said. "There is no need for childhood masking, no need for childhood vaccinations. They can just go to school now and the teachers and the children can be normal. And if they develop cold-like symptoms, they can take a day or two off for the cold."

"Kids and teachers should be behaving normal, and parents as well," Dr. McCullough said. "Everyone should just return to normal behavior."