Day: December 30, 2022

By: C. J. Hopkins | This article was originally published here.

Well, it has been quite a year, 2022. I’m officially dubbing it “The Year of the Gaslighter.” I was going to dub it “The Year of the Mother of All Global-Capitalist Gaslighters,” but that seemed like a mouthful, so I’m opting for brevity.

Seriously, if there were an Olympics of Gaslighting, GloboCap (i.e., the global corporatocracy) would take the gold in every event. At this point, the majority of the global masses have been successfully gaslighted into a semi-conscious, quasi-cyclothymic state in which they oscillate, on a moment-by-moment basis, between robotic obedience and impotent rage.

Those who are not still walking around in their masks and prophylactic face shields and injecting themselves with experimental “vaccines” for reasons they no longer even pretend to be able to articulate without gibbering like imbeciles are genuflecting at the feet of an oligarch huckster who they believe has come to deliver them from Wokeness.

If you were GloboCap, and in the process of imposing your new official ideology on the entire planet in a kind of global Gleichschaltung op, and otherwise establishing your “New Normal Reich,” and you needed the masses confused and compliant, you couldn’t ask for much more from your Gaslighting Division!

The gaslighting got underway in January, when the corporate media, health authorities, and other major organs of the New Normal Reich started suddenly “discovering” that the official Covid narrative was “inaccurate,” or, you know, a bunch of lies. A series of limited hangouts ensued.

Suddenly, it appeared that the “Covid case” and “Covid death” statistics were inaccurate, or inflated, or had been fabricated. The “vaccines” didn’t work. They were killing people. Lockdowns had been a “serious mistake.” And so on.

Duplicitous politicians, pusillanimous public-health authorities, perfidious pundits, and assorted other professional sycophants and lying weasels were shocked to discover they had inadvertently been part of the most insidious PSYOP that had ever been perpetrated on the masses in the history of insidious mass-PSYOPs.

The Last Days of the Covidian Cult were upon us! The Corporatocracy had overplayed their hand, and underestimated their opposition, and they knew it.

But the Cult was not going to go down quietly. In February, in Ottawa, Canada, thousands of truckers and other working-class people who had had enough of the Pandemic PSYOP occupied the streets outside the capitol and demanded an end to “vaccination mandates,” segregation of “the Unvaccinated,” and other “emergency health measures.”

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian media, and their counterparts throughout the New Normal Reich immediately denounced the protesters as “treasonous, Russia-backed, transphobic, Nazi terrorists.”

This affront to the authority of the New Normal Reich could not be allowed to go unpunished, so Trudeau declared de facto martial law and unleashed a battalion of militarized police and other unidentified goons to beat and trample the protesters with horses (including one old lady with a “terrorist walker”).

Then he went about hunting down and freezing the bank accounts of any Canadians who had donated to the protest, and otherwise attempting to destroy the lives of anyone who had disobeyed him.

This display of contempt for the rule of law and the ruthlessness of the New Normal Reich was one of the last of the bloody crackdowns on dissidents in countries all over the world that had been in progress for over a year by then, e.g., in Australia, The Netherlands, France, Germany, China, and other countries.

These vicious “crackdowns” on peaceful protests were conducted “to protect the public health,” of course, and were not at all a display of brute force meant to intimidate the masses into obedience. The global-capitalist ruling classes are not fascists, or totalitarians, after all, and anyone who suggests they are is clearly a “Russia-backed, Covid-denying, conspiracy-theorizing extremist,” or whatever.

Oh, and speaking of totalitarians, and fascists, and goose-stepping, Sieg-heiling neo-Nazis, the Gaslighting Cavalcade of 2022 reached a whole new level of gaslighting in March, when, after years of provocation, Russia finally invaded Ukraine, and all the Ukrainian neo-Nazis that the corporate media had been extensively reporting on magically vanished into the ether.

Yes, it was Springtime for the GloboCap Nazis! And not just for the GloboCap Nazis! Liberals, still struggling with withdrawal symptoms from the adrenaline rush of the Covidian Cult, and the thrill of fanatically persecuting “the Unvaccinated,” suddenly had a new official narrative that they could mindlessly parrot and fanatically defend from the “conspiracy theorists” and “disinformationists.”

The only problem was, it didn’t make any sense. According to the new official narrative, those reports of Ukrainian neo-Nazis by virtually every mainstream media outlet and Nazi-hunting organization on the planet in the years leading up to 2022 were now, suddenly, just “Russian propaganda.” GloboCap hadn’t even bothered to scrub or visibility-filter those reports. They were all still right there on the Internet.

And, OK, the other problem was, in order to remain “New Normals in Good Standing” and keep their jobs and social contacts, liberals were now forced to actively cheer for swastika-tattooed, Sieg-heiling Nazis, and look the other way as Ukrainian fascists advocated the mass murder of children and quoted Adolf Eichmann on Ukrainian television.

The Spring and Summer were kind of a blur, or maybe I was just preoccupied with publishing The Rise of the New Normal Reich, a collection of my essays documenting the rollout of the New Normal in 2020 and 2021, which was an international Barnes & Noble and Amazon bestseller upon its release, and then was promptly banned by Amazon in Germany, The Netherlands, and Austria, and labelled with a “Covid-19 vaccine warning” advising readers to visit the CDC before purchasing and (God help them!) reading the book in every other Amazon market.

I vaguely remember something about monkeypox, but, mostly, when I wasn’t promoting the book, or struggling to keep my breakfast down after seeing another one of my liberal friends cheering for neo-Nazis on Facebook, I was focused on events here in New Normal Germany (which, yes, mask mandates are still in effect), and The Normalization of the New Normal Reich (which, no, is not over, but is just beginning), and attempting to start to emotionally recover from two solid years of official gaslighting, demonization, segregation, and so on.

Fortunately, in September, right on cue, as I was working through my emotional issues, i.e., how most of my former friends and colleagues had either gone silent and looked away as our constitutional rights were cancelled, dissent was censored and demonized, goon squads were dispatched to brutalize dissidents, experimental “vaccines” were forced on people, a social segregation system was implemented, and so on, or else, if they hadn’t gone silent, they had joined the shrieking fascistic mob … just as I was starting to process all that, as were a lot of other people, a prophet arrived on the “freedom” scene!

That’s right, as it turned out, I was totally wrong about the new totalitarianism, and how it works! I had stupidly assumed it was a political phenomenon … you know, a sociopolitical and cultural system imposed on the masses from above by force, but, according to Mattias Desmet, it’s actually a psychological phenomenon, a “mass formation” or “mass hypnosis”-type thing!

It’s possible that I’m not describing it correctly. As his devoted fans have repeatedly informed me, I don’t understand the nuances of Desmet’s theory. He explained it all on the Alex Jones show, while he was lying, which he does, repeatedly, but … whatever. I’m not a professor of psychology.

The point is, the Covidian Cultists were all hypnotized! No one was threatening or gaslighting the masses! The poor confused things were doing it to themselves! But that was not the end of the gaslighting. Globocap saved the best for last!

See, the problem was, there were all these people who hadn’t joined the Covidian Cult or any other part of the New Normal movement, and who were extremely angry about having been demonized, and segregated, and censored, and gaslighted, and so on, by their governments, global corporations, non-governmental governing entities, the corporate media, “scientific experts,” and the majority of the masses for two and a half years.

Something needed to be done about all that anger. It needed to be redirected somewhere. At something that wasn’t GloboCap, and that wouldn’t interfere with the New Normal program. Emperor Elonicus to the rescue!

If Elon Musk wasn’t actually appointed by the global-capitalist ruling classes to redirect the pent-up anger of “the Unvaccinated” demographic, and the “Systematically Censored and Demonized” demographic, and everyone else who opposed the New Normal into a left/right slinging contest … well, they couldn’t have found anyone better for the job.

Consider what he’s accomplished in the space of six weeks. After purchasing Twitter for $44 billion, he bought himself a couple of independent journalists — because who could resist the Twitter Files? I certainly couldn’t have, had I been in their position — and is staging the most audacious limited hangout in the history of audacious limited hangouts.

Whether it will work over the longer term is unclear — Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are already starting to become uncomfortable with being perceived and treated as Elon Musk’s employees — but, so far, it is going gangbusters!

Now, students of limited hangouts, whitewashing, and other COINTELPRO ops, really need to pay attention. Because the beauty of this limited hangout is that the “hangout” is actually a monumental story, an up-close look at the nuts-and-bolts processes of the global-capitalist Ministry of Truth. As Matt Taibbi reported in a recent piece …

“… the Twitter Files show something new. We now have clear evidence that agencies like the FBI and the DHS are in the business of mass-analyzing social media activity — your tweets and mine, down to the smallest users with the least engagement — and are, themselves, mass-marking posts to be labeled, ‘bounced,’ deleted or ‘visibility filtered’ by firms like Twitter.

The technical and personnel infrastructure for this effort is growing. As noted in the thread, the FBI’s social media-focused task force now has at least 80 agents, and is in constant contact with Twitter for all sorts of reasons. The FBI is not doing this as part of any effort to build criminal cases. They’ve taken on this new authority unilaterally, as part of an apparently massive new effort to control and influence public opinion.

These agencies claim variously to be concerned about election integrity, foreign interference, medical misinformation, and monitoring domestic extremism, among other things. As crises wax and wane, the building out of the censorship infrastructure to ever-bigger and broader dimensions has been constant, suggesting that creating and deploying the tool to manipulate opinion was always the real end.”

And this monumental story is being buried in BS … American red/blue partisan BS. With a series of ham-handed PR stunts, cheap provocations, attention-grabbing antics, and good old-fashioned diversionary shit-slinging, Musk is (a) whitewashing the new “free-speech Twitter,” which continues to censor and defame us with impunity, (b) burying the actual story under a steaming heap of partisan acrimony, and (c) driving a big blunt wedge into the supra-partisan coalition of forces that had aligned in opposition to the roll-out of the New Normal.

That, my friends, is some world-class gaslighting! And the wildest part is, he probably doesn’t even consciously realize what he’s doing. Nevertheless, by the time he’s done playing grab-ass with the freedom-of-speech thing, and getting revenge on Taylor Lorenz, and so on, corporate censorship will have been completely normalized.

“Freedom of speech” will be a running joke, as opposing camps of hate-drunk hypocrites take turns applauding as global corporations and their governmental partners censor one camp or the other.

On that cheery note, I’ll sign off for the year, and go tend to all the irate messages I’m getting from abject Elon Musk worshipers, and the hate-email from assorted anti-Semites, and so on, and then hibernate until 2023.

Oh, yeah, and those “Covid Twitter Files.” I can’t wait to scroll through those with a nice glass of eggnog. I’m sure they will be coming out any day now, maybe even on Christmas morning! Happy holidays to one and all!

C.J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant.

Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

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The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

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• A recent laboratory investigation by The Highwire reveals the only consistent thing about the COVID shots are their inconsistency. There is no quality control. Some appear clear like saline, while others are loaded with contaminants

• In August 2021, Japan rejected 1.63 million doses of Moderna’s mRNA shot due to contamination. Last year the European Medicines Agency (EMA) also expressed concern over vials that were only 50% to 55% pure

• The vials also contain massively inconsistent amounts of polyethylene glycol (PEG). PEG can cause anaphylactic shock in some people. PEG also gets in the way of proper immune response

• If you are unfortunate enough to get a vial that is loaded with PEG, your risk of adverse effects such as anaphylactic shock and dysregulated immune response is greater than if you get a vial with lower amounts

• According to Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist, what looks like microchips or nanotechnology in the liquid are actually stacked cholesterol, sugar and salt crystals, and what has been described as parasites are stellate trikons, found on the bottom of leaves. They’re likely a contaminant picked up at some point during the lab investigation

December 12, 2022, The Highwire posted1 a fascinating and shocking lab investigation of the COVID shots. Del Bigtree begins by reviewing some of the many alleged findings by organizations looking at the shots using various technologies. For example, some claim to have found graphite in the vials, while others have discovered what looks like nanotechnology and parasites.

“Some of these we’ve addressed here and others we haven’t,” Bigtree says. “Part of it is I really don’t like addressing something that I don’t know where the information is coming from …

I do not trust experts just because they tell me they’re an expert. I want to see the science, I want to see the evidence, I want to see how it’s done … So, I reached out to Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist who has proved to me that he’s impeccable in the work that he does. He’s unbiased.

And I said, ‘Would you do me a favor? Can we get a hold of these vaccines? I want to come into the laboratory. I want to see it with my own eyes. Can we bring some cameras in and do a real investigation?'”

Cole agreed, and that taped investigation is what you see in the video above. Cole begins by showing what some of the white rubbery clots look like under the microscope, and slides showing the distribution of spike protein in various tissues.

A number of embalmers have reported pulling these stringy, stretchy objects out of deceased people who got the jab, and they’re different from anything they’ve ever seen before. Cole agrees that these clots are something brand-new.

Cole describes the white elastic clots as “an amyloid-type of material” induced by the spike protein, which is actually a glycoprotein. He cites a paper2 from August 2021 by Etheresia Pretorius and her team, in which she describes finding “persistent circulating plasma microclots that are resistant to fibrinolysis” in long-COVID patients and those who have received the COVID jab.

She refers to them as “anomalous amyloid microclots.” In summary, what she discovered was that even when she took the platelets out of the blood, once she added spike protein, the proteins still glommed together, forming masses, and processes that would normally break down a blood clot do not work on these amyloid-like depositions.

Cole then moves on to look at the COVID shots under a microscope. The first one is the Janssen shot, which has what looks like debris in it, including, potentially, a shard of glass. As noted by Cole, when manufacturing is ramped up to the current speeds at which these shots are produced, there’s really no purity guarantee.

As you may recall, in August 2021, Japan rejected 1.63 million doses of Moderna’s mRNA shot due to contamination. Last year the European Medicines Agency (EMA) also expressed concern over vials that were only 50% to 55% pure.

This impurity also means that you may be getting fragmented RNA, as opposed to complete RNA, which can have unforeseen consequences, as shortened RNA can end up producing incomplete proteins. Of the Pfizer vials, some also contained unidentifiable particles, some of which were stuck together.

That said, where others see nanotechnology — square objects that resemble microchips — Cole sees stacked cholesterol. So, while there’s debris (which is bad enough) he does not ascribe to theories that the shots include nanotech.

Some have also discovered what looks like parasites but, according to Cole, they are stellate trikons, found on the bottom of leaves. He suggests it’s an impurity that landed in the liquid or on the glass during the process of investigation. Bigtree summarized their findings:

“Generally speaking, as we looked at all the different vaccines, one of the conclusions that we came away with is, it’s just a hodgepodge. There were vaccines that seemed like they had no particles, almost nothing, there; almost like a saline shot. And then the [next] one would be just packed with all sorts of things. You just get this sense that the manufacturing is totally and completely inconsistent.”

Cole agreed:

“I agree 100%. Some are more concentrated, some were less, and that goes to the point, where are these being made? Is the FDA inspecting each facility? No. And these are being made around the world, and they were ramped up so quickly. It’s not good manufacturing process … And … this is a very unique, brand-new process which they’re using at a mass scale.”

The shots were also analyzed using mass spectronomy, which revealed the presence of metallic particles, including aluminum, silicon, magnesium, sodium chloride, calcium, titanium and iron. Cole cites research showing that some of these metals come from the needle used to extract the liquid from the vial, so they may or may not be part of the actual formula in the vial.

They also found massively inconsistent amounts of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in the different vials. PEG, which is what coats and protects the mRNA, is what causes anaphylactic shock in some people, as PEG sensitivity and allergies are common among the general public. Worse, however, is the fact that PEG also gets in the way of proper immune response.

“Poor, inconsistent manufacturing processes are resulting in wildly varying contents from one batch or vial to another.”

If you are unfortunate enough to get a vial that is loaded with PEG, your risk of adverse effects such as anaphylactic shock and dysregulated immune response is greater than if you get a vial with the appropriate amount, or less than what the recipe calls for. Again, it’s a sign of poor, inconsistent manufacturing processes resulting in wildly varying contents from one batch or vial to another. Notably, no graphene was found in any of the 100 vials tested. Cole explains:

“Those little flakes that we were seeing, those little lines and floating things, those are three things: cholesterol crystals — there’s a cholesterol cholesterin spike on some of these mass spec graphs — … salt and some sugars … So, at the end of the day, the mass spec showed that’s what it was.

These vials have lipid content. They have polyethylene glycol content in varying ratios. They have salts, they have sugars. They do have genetic material … and some lots had some contaminants …

There’s lipid nanoparticle and a gene sequence that makes your body make a foreign protein. Those two things are necessary and sufficient to cause harm. Sure, you want a pure product, but those are the two harmful things. The lipid nanoparticle is hyper-inflammatory and can be toxic.

When it was designed, it was made to be given once. Studies on giving it two, three, four times aren’t there in humans. So, the cumulative toxicity of the nanoparticle itself is concerning.

Even more concerning is [that] the more of this gene you get into your cells that continues to make a protein that has known countless side effects … that toxic spike protein. That’s what matters.”

The real show-stopper is toward the end, where they take a drop of Bigtree’s blood, who is unjabbed, and then add a drop of the COVID “vaccine.” The slide containing nothing but his unjabbed blood looks perfectly normal, with nice doughnut-shaped cells.

The slides to which a drop of COVID “vaccine” was added show remarkable inconsistencies. On one slide, in the area touched by the liquid, the red blood cells looked like they’d evaporated. According to Cole, the cells were basically “de-hemoglobiated.”

The hemoglobin was just wiped out. As a result, the cells turned white, which makes it look as though they evaporated. “That just says that many of these vials are very, very irritating in their pre-mixture … It all goes back to purity and consistency of manufacturing,” Cole says. The blood cells were also clumping toward the outside of the drop, many were folding together and echinocytes were clearly visible. As explained by Cole:

“It instantly changed the pH of the interior. These are little blobs of protein on the membrane of the red cell, because the red cell has involuted … All these little fingers, that is not spike protein. That’s another myth.

But that’s fascinating, because that instantly changed the pH of the interior of the cell. And it caused a massive outflow of fluid from the interior of the cell causing all that cell membrane folding. That’s wild.

It was almost instantaneous, and it is everywhere. Those red cells are now nonfunctional red cells. Those aren’t going to carry a whit of oxygen. Now your body has to decide what to do and has an inflammatory reaction, because now it has to gobble those up.”

In closing, Cole says:

“To go back to the key point — I want to drive this home — they’re going to try to do lipid nanoparticles plus influenza genes, plus RSV genes for all these other shots going forward. We already know that this was a failed ‘vaccine’ program. They have a technology that’s harmful. Human cells are meant to make human proteins. Human cells were not meant to make foreign toxic proteins.

Traditional vaccines don’t do that. Your body wants to make its own protein, not a flu protein, not an RSV protein, not any other viral protein, not SARS-CoV-2 protein. This platform is sufficiently proven to be dangerous that not only do the COVID shots need to be stopped, but the platform [as well] …

We see enough things going wrong already. I think that’s the message to humanity, to regulatory agencies, to government officials that are willing to step in and block regulatory corruption … Let’s stop these programs. Let’s continue to do proper science and not rush science.

You know that quote in the European Committee? ‘We were working at the speed of science.’ Good science isn’t rushed. And the Pfizer exec that just stepped down? [She said] ‘We were building the airplane while we were trying to fly it.’ Good grief. And she was proud of that. No, that’s not what you do to your fellow human beings. And that’s not what we do in medicine and safety.”

Bigtree adds:

“We stopped these gene programs multiple times. They’ve [been] stopped in their tracks because they were causing too much cancer. We’re having serious problems with this technology.

It has been stopped for all those reasons, so we should have been very concerned [about] using it as a vaccine. We certainly should not have rushed it. Instead we put it in front of a bunch of ‘kindergarteners’ that know nothing about what they’re looking at, and they approved it …

[T]here is something going wrong. And when we listen to Edward Dowd, insurance actuaries are going [under] because of the rise in all-cause mortality. All of this is happening, and they literally want to fast-track a system where they can just start banging these out [without] safety trials. This is a movie. This is a cartoon. How are real people acting like this? … These are critically damaging choices being made.”

If you already got one or more jabs, stop now and take no more. That’s step No. 1. If you struggle with post-jab symptoms, be sure to look at the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s (FLCCC) post-jab injury protocol.

Remedies that can help inhibit, neutralize and eliminate spike protein have also been identified by the World Health Council. Inhibitors that prevent the spike protein from binding to your cells include Prunella vulgaris, pine needle tea, emodin, neem, dandelion extract and the drug ivermectin. Dr. Pierre Kory, of FLCCC, believes ivermectin may be the best approach to bind the circulating spike protein.

Spike protein neutralizers, which prevent the spike from damaging cells, include N-acetylcysteine (NAC), glutathione, fennel tea, star anise tea, pine needle tea, St. John’s wort, comfrey tea and vitamin C.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) can also help eliminate the toxic proteins by stimulating autophagy, and nattokinase, a form of fermented soy, is helpful for reducing blood clots. Several additional detox remedies can be found in “World Council for Health Reveals Spike Protein Detox.”

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

• Vitamin C and quercetin have synergistic effects that make them useful in the prevention and early at-home treatment of COVID-19. Both are part of the MATH+ protocol developed by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC)

• For COVID-19 prophylaxis, the FLCCC recommends vitamin C, quercetin, zinc, melatonin and vitamin D3

• The at-home treatment for mildly symptomatic patients is very similar to the prophylactic regimen, but adds several optional drugs, including aspirin, famotidine (an antacid) and ivermectin (a heartworm medication that has been shown to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro)

• The in-hospital MATH+ protocol calls for intravenous methylprednisolone, high-dose ascorbic acid (vitamin C), thiamine and heparin. Optional additions include melatonin, zinc, vitamin D3, atorvastatin, famotidine and magnesium

• There are two distinct phases or stages of COVID-19 — the viral replication stage and the immune dysfunction stage — and the treatment must be appropriate for the stage you’re in. Equally crucial is starting aggressive treatment as early as possible

Quercetin was initially found to provide broad-spectrum protection against SARS coronavirus in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic that broke out across 26 countries in 2003.1 2 3 Now, some doctors are advocating its use against SARS-CoV-2, in combination with vitamin C, noting that the two have synergistic effects.

Incidentally, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and the bioflavonoid quercetin (originally labeled vitamin P) were both discovered by the same scientist — Nobel prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi.4 5 Quercetin’s antiviral capacity has been attributed to five main mechanisms of action:

1. Inhibiting the virus’ ability to infect cells by transporting zinc across cellular membranes

2. Inhibiting replication of already infected cells

3. Reducing infected cells’ resistance to treatment with antiviral medication

4. Inhibiting platelet aggregation — and many COVID-19 patients suffer abnormal blood clotting

5. Promoting SIRT2, thereby inhibiting the NLRP3 inflammasome assembly involved with COVID-19 infection

Similarly, vitamin C at extremely high doses also acts as an antiviral drug, effectively inactivating viruses. During the 2003 SARS pandemic, a Finnish researcher called6 for an investigation into the use of vitamin C after research showed it not only protected broiler chicks against avian coronavirus, but also cut the duration and severity of common cold in humans and significantly lowered susceptibility to pneumonia.

While high-dose vitamin C is new for COVID-19 treatment, it’s been used as a treatment for sepsis since about 2017. The vitamin C-based sepsis treatment was developed by Dr. Paul Marik, former critical care doctor at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in East Virginia, which has since adopted it as standard of care for sepsis.

In the interview above, Marik explains how the COVID-19 critical care protocol grew out of his sepsis treatment, as he and other doctors noticed there were many similarities between sepsis and severe COVID-19 infection, in particular the out-of-control inflammatory cascade.

To address the differences between the two conditions, a group of doctors, including Marik, founded the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group7 (FLCCC), and began developing a modified protocol specifically for COVID-19.

Known as the MATH+ protocol,8 9 it involves the use of three key medicines, all of which need to be started within six hours of hospital admission:

• Intravenous methylprednisolone, to suppress the immune system and prevent organ damage from cytokine storms

• Intravenous ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to control inflammation and prevent the development of leaky blood vessels in the lungs

• Subcutaneous heparin (enoxaparin), to thin the blood and prevent blood clots

The initial MATH+ protocol10 was released in April 2020. In early July and August, it was updated11 12 to include quercetin and a number of optional nutrients and drugs, not only for critical care but also for prophylaxis and mild disease being treated at home.

“There is evidence that vitamin C and quercetin co-administration exerts a synergistic antiviral action due to overlapping antiviral and immunomodulatory properties and the capacity of ascorbate to recycle quercetin, increasing its efficacy.”

For prophylaxis, the FLCCC recommends:13

• Vitamin C — 500 mg

• Quercetin — 250 mg to 500 mg

• Zinc — 75-100 mg/day (acetate, gluconate or picolinate). Zinc lozenges are preferred. After one month, reduce the dose to 30 mg to 50 mg per day

• Melatonin (slow release) — Begin with 0.3 mg and increase as tolerated to 2 mg at night

• Vitamin D3 — 1,000 to 4,000 IUs per day

The at-home treatment for mildly symptomatic patients is very similar, but adds several optional drugs, including aspirin (ASA), famotidine (an antacid), ivermectin (a heartworm medication that has been shown to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro14). (For dosages, see the Critical Care Management Protocol15 summary, available on the Easter Virginia Medical School’s site.)

They also recommend monitoring your oxygen saturation with a pulse oximeter and to go to the hospital if you get below 94%. The medical evidence to support each drug and nutrient can be found under “Medical Evidence”16 on the FLCCC’s website.

In July, the in-hospital protocol was revised17 again to include thiamine (which is also a key ingredient in Marik’s sepsis protocol). As of the last revision, the in-hospital MATH+ protocol18 calls for:

• IV methylprednisolone

• High-dose ascorbic acid (vitamin C)

• Thiamine

• Heparin

• Optional — melatonin, zinc, vitamin D3, atorvastatin, famotidine and magnesium

According to the FLCCC, “By initiating the protocol soon after a patient meets criteria for oxygen supplementation, the need for mechanical ventilators and ICU beds will decrease dramatically.” While heparin is an important part of the protocol due to the clotting complications in the microvasculature of the lung, it is likely that N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) is likely a far better choice as it is far safer and likely as effective.

This is a key point: There are two distinct phases or stages of COVID-19 — the viral replication stage and the immune dysfunction stage — and the treatment must be appropriate for the stage you’re in. Equally crucial is starting aggressive treatment as early as possible. The graphic below details the two stages of disease, and the FLCCC’s suggested treatment focus for each.

Peak viral replication takes place at the earliest signs of symptoms, which include cold/flu-like symptoms, loss of taste and smell, myalgia (muscle pain) and general malaise.

From the time of symptom onset to the time that immune dysregulation starts to set in (accompanied by worsening symptoms) is about five or six days. During this time, you need to aggressively treat, whether you’re at home (see the at-home treatment for symptomatic patients) or in the hospital.

The key remedies in this phase are antivirals (which is what vitamin C, quercetin and zinc are). Anti-inflammatories should be avoided in this phase, Marik warns. Again, if treating at home, be sure to monitor your oxygen saturation with a pulse oximeter. If your oxygen drops to 94% or below when sitting or walking, it’s time to go to the hospital.

If your immune system is unable to successfully combat the virus, then five to six days after first symptoms, early pulmonary dysfunction can set in. At this point, anti-inflammatories — i.e., corticosteroids — and immune suppressive therapeutics are required.

Another important concept explained by Marik in the featured interview is that the inflammatory response rises as the viral load decreases. They do not rise together.

“So, it’s really not the virus that is causing cytopathic effects,” he says. By the time you enter the pulmonary phase of the disease, your viral load has actually significantly decreased, but for some reason the inflammatory response then starts to run amok.

Your oxygen saturation is “the key indicator of pulmonary involvement,” Marik says. Once your oxygen saturation starts to decline, you are entering the early pulmonary phase where inflammation is rapidly increasing.

This is why it’s so important to make sure you’re measuring your oxygen saturation. Do not try to treat at home if your oxygen is dropping. Go to the hospital. Again, early treatment is crucial. Hopefully, your doctor will be willing to implement the MATH+ protocol.

In a short essay19 co-written by the entire FLCCC team, they express their conviction that the MATH+ protocol is one of the best, most effective, critical care protocols for COVID-19 to date.

“Months ago, early on in COVID19, the FLCCC created the MATH+ protocol based on our physicians’ insights into COVID19 as a steroid-responsive disease.

This treatment recommendation went against all the major national and international health care societies that had misinterpreted the medical literature, a body of published evidence which, upon careful and deep review, actually supported the use of corticosteroids in prior pandemics …

Thousands of patients who became critically ill with Covid19 and who were suffering from massive inflammation may have been saved if this safe and powerful anti-inflammatory medicine had been provided.”

The essay20 stresses the importance of corticosteroids in the treatment of COVID-19, and cites results from the RECOVERY trial,21 22 23 a large, randomized controlled COVID-19 study by the University of Oxford, that validates their recommendation to use corticosteroids as soon as the patient is hospitalized.

In that study, the corticosteroid dexamethasone improved survival by one-third in ventilated patients and one-fifth in those requiring oxygen. However, the FLCCC believes another type of corticosteroid, methylprednisolone, is a better, more effective, choice.

First, because it reaches higher concentrations in lung tissue, and secondly, because it most closely matches the inflammatory gene activation patterns induced by SARS-CoV-2. They also believe the dexamethasone dose used in the RECOVERY trial was too low, especially for severe cases.

“In the hospitals of two of our FLCCC physicians — each having treated over 100 hospitalized patients with MATH+ often early on in the hospitalization, the hospital mortality rate to date is 7% in one hospital (Dr. Paul Marik, Norfolk, Va.) and less than 1% in the other (Dr. Joseph Varon, Houston, Texas),” the essay states.24

June 19, 2020, Marik published the paper,25 “Quercetin and Vitamin C: An Experimental, Synergistic Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Related Disease (COVID-19)” in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, which notes:

“Ascorbic acid is a crucial vitamin necessary for the correct functioning of the immune system. It plays a role in stress response and has shown promising results when administered to the critically ill. Quercetin is a well-known flavonoid whose antiviral properties have been investigated in numerous studies.

There is evidence that vitamin C and quercetin co-administration exerts a synergistic antiviral action due to overlapping antiviral and immunomodulatory properties and the capacity of ascorbate to recycle quercetin, increasing its efficacy.

Safe, cheap interventions which have a sound biological rationale should be prioritized for experimental use in the current context of a global health pandemic.”

The paper presents evidence for the use of vitamin C and quercetin — based on their biological actions and pharmacokinetics profiles — both as prophylaxis in high-risk populations, and as an adjunct to drugs such as Remdesivir or convalescent plasma in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

In the interview, Marik also addresses the issue of “post-COVID syndrome,” which he says is very similar to that of post-sepsis syndrome. In some cases, COVID-19 patients have recovered from the infection, only to die due to pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs) or other organ dysfunction.

Marik suspects this is because the inflammatory response is still overactive. Many sepsis patients will have very high cytokine levels even a year after their recovery. He believes steroids are one key to downregulating the inflammatory response, which would prevent this problem.

A good way to screen for this, Marik says, is to measure CRP, which appear to be a good marker for ongoing inflammation. If CRP is high after recovering from COVID-19, Marik suggests doing a short course of corticosteroids to downregulate the inflammatory response. Aspirin may also be helpful if D-dimer is high. These should be used under medical supervision.

I believe this information needs to be shared far and wide, if we are to prevent more people from dying unnecessarily. More and more, as doctors are starting to speak openly about their clinical findings, we see there are quite a few different ways to tackle this illness without novel antivirals or vaccines, using older, inexpensive and readily available medications and nutrients that are already known to be safe.

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