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.
Discovery of Vitamin D for Influenza
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.
Fauci, appointed as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) in 1984, is in charge of coordinating research to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases, immune-related ailments, and allergies.
“The story he tells me is that he was assigned to go visit Dr. Fauci and he met with Dr. Fauci, presenting the data thinking he’s going to get a: ‘job well-done soldier, this is important information, we’re going to invest all kinds of money and promote vitamin D based on your exceptional work and findings of your team,’” Malone said.
“Instead, what he got told by Tony Fauci, per his relating the story to me, was the phrase, ‘we don’t use drugs to treat influenza, we treat influenza with vaccines only.’ And with that, it died.”
Fauci did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by press time.
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.”