Imagine being fired for telling the truth. That's exactly what happened to a friend of the show. So what I've gotten to know throughout COVID doctor Martin Kolder. He's been fired from Harvard University, where he's been since two thousand and three, twenty one years of dedication. This is a man who's a world renowned epidemiologist and biostatistician. This is someone for decades who helped the CDC and the FDA develop their post market vaccine safety systems. Why was he fired?
He was fired because he signed the Great Barrington Declaration. When he warned us against lockdowns, when he told us that kids should be kept in schools, that they should be able to continue their lives. He told us the truth about natural immunity. This is a man who warned us about vaccines too, only telling us that not everyone needed to get it. All of this has been proven right, yet still fired from Harvard. So how much of this is because he just didn't go along with the forced
scientific status quo. We're going to get his tap on why he thinks he was fired also reflect a little bit about what we know now since COVID as well. He's a really good man. He is brave, he is honest, he is fearless. He told us the truth during COVID. He has faced big, big consequences as a result of it. Trust me, you're not gonna want to miss this conversation with doctor Martin Colder. Well, I'll start off saying, doctor
Martin Colder. Doctor you've asked me to call you Martin, but just for the audience's purposes, I was going to fuck you, doctor Colder, but I'm going to call you Martin throughout the podcast as requested. So I just don't want people to think I was disrespecting you. But it's always an honor to have you on the show, Stir. You've been on before. You're just a truth teller and that's what we're going to get into in this episode. But I just appreciate you making the time.
Well, thank you for having me on. It's great talking to you again.
You know, So, Martin, I was dismayed, I'm sure as you were, to see the news that you've been a professor of medicine at Heartard University since two thousand and three and they decided to fire you after twenty one years of dedication, you know, for more than two decades. You helped the CDC, the FDA develop post market vaccine safety systems. I mean, you're internationally world renowned and they decided to fire you. What was their explanation, Well.
We had a disagreement with the fundamental issue of science, which is infection, the quited immunity. So we've known about that since the thetium plague in four thirty BC, so for almost two and a half thousand years. By putting in the vaccine mandates, they are the fact to denying basic science that we're known for a long time, forcing people all that it has superior unity to get the vaccine. So I argued against vaccine mandates both publicly and also
privately in my own case. And for example, at Harvard's Bringing and Women's at Harvard's mass Teneral mass Dennal Brigham Hospital, nazis were working.
Theyre any care of of.
COVID patients, and then they get COVID, so they were all for a few weeks and then they go back to work and they take care of w COVID patients. But then when the vaccine came, they are fired because they didn't take the vaccine, because they didn't need it. They didn't they already had superior immunity from having had COVID, And of course that was a decision made by the bureaucrats hospital and University of Bureaucrats.
So I was in the same situation.
I didn't I never feeded the patients because a matter of physician, I'm a PhD, apnologist and the biostatistician, so I didn't need it. I have a genetic condition that makes me uh a very h uwione deficiency called off A one of the tryptian deficiency, so I didn't know what the risk was from the vaccine for me.
And I also thought it was unethical.
Because all the people they need the vaccines because they had the high risk of dying from COVID. So when there's a VACS see if short as if you're pro vaccine, suppose it's just a perfect vaccine that no side of vicine does that. But suppose it was a perfect vaccine, you wouldn't want to few pro vaccine. You wouldn't want
to give it to people who don't need it. When there are people around the world, like my eighty seven year old neighbor, for example, who hadn't gotten it yet, so there was an unethical to take the vaccine if you don't need it, if the other people who do need it.
But you were right. I just I guess I could maybe see at the very beginning of all of this, you know, when we didn't really have the full information, I still would think that was wrong. I would still disagree with it. But everything you just laid out we know to be true. I mean, that's just factual information. So they're firing you over stating facts.
Well, it was true from four hundred and thirty BC until two thousand and nineteen, and then it wasn't true from twenty and twenty until twenty twenty three, I guess, and now it's true again. So so I guess that's one way to see it.
Do you think this is Harvard driven or do you think they got some sort of external pressure because I know that, you know, Anthony Fauci went to war against you for speaking the truth and the other Great Barrington signers, which we'll get into a bit. I mean, do you do you think this is Harvard's decision or do they face some sort of external pressure?
Well, it's the decision at that it's a decision by the Harvard's Mass General Brigham Hospital where I worked, don of Harvard Medical School, because they think they could have given me an exemption. They gave exemptions to other faculty member, other staff, so they could if they wanted, they could have given me an exemption. There was plenty of medical reasons to provide me an exemptions if they wanted to.
But of course there's also outside pressure.
The Mass General Brigham is the biggest recipience of research funding FORMMIA except the tune of a billion dollars, more than a billion dollars a year, and so of course they are very sensitive to what the Anthony Fautschelt was the head of the nationally City of Maggy and a victial diseases as what Process Collins things was the head of the NIH. So of course they're very sensitive to outside pressure as well among these things. So I think
it's a combination. But I mean, I think Harvard was sort of a leading also institute in pushing for the lockdowns. That they were the first major university to close down announced to have a remote learning at which other universities
and colleges sort of followed the Harvard lead. And also High schools and elementary schools, So that was done long before the government had any pressure to close schools universities, so they sort of took a leading approach to close down the educational institutions.
And during the lockdowns.
You do you think that this is about you telling the truth? Or do you think this is because you sort of challenged the scientific community? Right? I mean there is this sort of forced consensus that was going on, you know, led by the Fauci Anthony Fauci, led by you know. I mean, do you do you think this is about telling the truth or do you think this is because you just you wouldn't go along with the program. We wouldn't go along with the forced consensus.
So I don't know what the ultimate decision was based on how they I don't know.
I don't know what they were thinking in their brains.
But there were all this long before before the vaccines, that they were unhappy with me about speaking up about the Great Brains To Declaration where we criticize school closures and other lockdown measures and we argue for that at detection of all the high risk people. So as soon as that there were there were they were unt happy
about that. So and not not the colleagues that I work with on a day the basis that I still have an excellent relationship with everybody I worked with personally, but the leadership certainly were unhappy about and had some complaints about that and.
Remind people, you know, why did you sign the Great Barrington Declaration and what did it stand for then? And sort of what do we know now about what you were saying then.
So the when the pandemic started, there was sort of an artificial consensus, so they were trying to pretend that there was a scientific constensus for school closest.
On lockdown, so there never was.
I was one of several infectious to sea sechnologists who did not agree with it, but it was very hard to make our words herb because we were only one. So in October of twenty twenty, I met with Jay Bonacharia, who was a doctor from Stanford and doctor sat Gup from Oxcar. It was the world's preeminent infectious to cease
at neologists. We met being Great Barrington, Massachusetts and the three of us after the Great Brington Declaration, where we argued for better protection of older people like less staffotation in nursing homes, they're more testing in nursing.
Homes and so on, and.
We argue that school should be open, and that we're still in closed down society with lockdowns because.
Everybody can get effected.
But there's more than a thousand full difference in the risk of mortality between the older people and the younger people. So that was against Fauci and sort of the narrative. But because there were three of us from three reasonably respectable universities who all worked in the infectious disease, they
couldn't dismiss us completely. So then they sort of instead started a campaign against us, as the NIS director of Francis Collins wrote to do take tun of us, considering us fringe at pineologists.
But I mean a lot of people agree with us.
So we quickly obtain over one hundred thousand, hundreds of thousands of co signers.
This almost a million by now, including.
Tens of thousands of the scientists and health professionals.
So the work clearly of big Yeah, it was clearly.
Not a consensus for these in my view of very unscientific pandemic messure that went against the basic principles of public health.
Let's take a quick Commercial break more with Martin Kolder on the other side. What do we know now? I mean, we're still finding out about the harm that lockdowns had on you know, kids, on you know, people in general. I mean, there was just this information from the CDC showing that the annual average of death related excessive alcohol use increased twenty nine percent during COVID. We still don't know the totality of the damage. But what do we do? What do we know today?
You're right, we don't know all of it.
I mean, we know that test course has gone down for kids in the US, differ in different states that depending on how much the schools were closed. We know there's increasing the mental health issues in well used alcoholism, but also like opiate overdoses, we know there was less cancer screening and cancer treatments, and that doesn't show up in the mortality. Is the statics immediates with because you don't die immediately different cancers because you don't get the
screened or treated. But that's something that will show up in in the mortality statistics for years to come.
Somebody who maybe.
Will not die maybe two years from now that would otherwise have lived now ten twenty years. So these things is something that we have to live with for a long time and it's very tragic, I think. But we also have the verdict now in looking at overall mortality.
So you can compare access mortality from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two to two so otherand twenty three, and we see that the major Western countries, Among major Western countries, the country that has the lowest access mortality is Sweden, which is the country that famously did not lockdown. They did the measures to protect other people and so on, but they didn't They never closed the elementary schools, they never closed the day cares, and they kept the businesses
and restaurants open, so and and so on. So we know, as it's kind of so that's the combination in that the lockdowns didn't really prevent any death at the same time the lockdowns that it didn't prevent COVID desk at the same time it caused death on other aspects of public health like quadiovascular disease or or mental health or cancer and so on.
Well, and our remember, you know, Sweden came out of a great scrutiny for you know, the way they decided to handle COVID, but you know, it looks like in terms of outcomes as you laid out, you know, they came out on top.
Yeah, we'll see the same thing in the in the US, for example, Florida, they locked down in the spring there, but then they sort of took a different, more focused protection approach and the Florida did slightly better than California if you if you look at age just that COVID mortality even though California locked down very harshly, so sort of Florida to do well hasn't the lowest in the in the state, but it's on the on the on
the positive half of states. We could also compare South Dakota, who didn't lock down much compared to North Dakota, not just next to it, and they.
Have a very similar COVID mortality.
Well, and we knew from really early on in the pandemic that young people were not as impacted as elderly. Yet you know, our public health officials never drew that distinction.
Yeah, that's sort of shocking because.
When the COVID reached northern Italy with outbreak there and in Iran, which was the two places also of China would where there was sort of outbreaks at the earliest. I got scared for about ten twenty minutes because I realized that, okay, this is going to reach.
The whole world. Sooner or late, they will reach every corner of the globe. So I quickly looked.
At the data from vu Wan because we didn't have any I don't think we had any mortality in the US by that time. So I looked at the Vuan data, and obviously people of all ages would have gotten affected in Wuhan, but of the people who died, it was heavily weighted towards all the people. So I did some back of the envelope calculations and I concluded that the difference in mortal at risk of mortality was more than a thousand and four difference between the old and the young.
So then it was obvious that okay, we can. I was so I was relieved because as a parent, I care more about my chillers lives for my own life, so I knew they would be fine. I was never worried about them.
So it was August done.
We should let kids live their lives young and also go about their business while we sort of maintaining society was important society. While we let older people make sure older people are protected. Instead, we protected the laptop class who could work from home even if we are twenty five years old and miniscule risk. Or we had sixty five year old cab drivers out there driving cabs, and that's one of the professions where they are most at
hirisks to be exposed. So the lockdowns was the biggest assault on the working class and the middle class here in the US since the segregation and the Vietnam War.
Well, and and to a point that you made earlier, I mean, there is a real deep and twisted irony. And you know, we were praising all these nurses and healthcare workers who worked during the height of the pandemic and got sick with COVID as a result, and then we fired them if they decided not to get the vaccine, when when they already had built up immunity, which, as you pointed out, has been a thing since the beginning of time.
It's it's astonishing and tragic, I think, and I think all those nurses should be higher and back, they should be off with their jobs back, so as well as everybody else was fired.
Well, you know, I.
Think in you know, having had a lot of these conversations with like truth tellers and people like you and doctor Badicharia and doctor Atlas, who I've all had, you know, on on my show, it seems like COVID in its entirety, you know, and obviously was never about the truth. It was never about the facts, it was never about the evidence. It was more about people getting in line and then punishing any dissenters. And that really was across the all fields. Right.
If you're in the media, you spoke out, they try to punish you. If you're in the scientific community as you are, they try to punish you. And it seems like it was more about just shut up and cement.
It was a very authoritarian mindset, yes, And to me that's sort of shocking. I thought that freewa speech was sort of a pillar that everybody agreed on, and I guess that's no longer the case, which is tragic. And I think if we don't get back to the mindset of fido or speech, I think that's the end of Western civilization. I know, and I mean I know scientists who were fired, I know physicians, nurses was fired.
I know journalist who was fired so on.
So yeah, it hit a lot of people, So I'm not I'm not surprised that a lot of people just to say it.
Don't going to shot my mouth. I'm not going to risk my.
Income and my family for this, So I fully understand that people would not speak out.
No, I like you in the sense of I can see why people did not, but you know, like you, I just I can't be one of those people. I'd rather you know, if someone tells me you can't press the red button, but pressing the red button is what needs to be done, or is the right thing to do, I'm just gonna do it, and I guess take the consequences as they come.
Thank you, Lisa.
I'm glad that you have that attitude, and I think that's important to have people like you so well, You're.
You're much more brave than me because this is my job. You know, Like, I think you were a total coward if you work in the media and you're unwilling to be honest. But like you risked your career at Harvard to speak out. I mean you didn't. You didn't have to, you know, I mean, I think what you guys did is what's brave.
I have to disagree with that. I'm a scientist. If I was a chemist, I could keep quiet, But I'm I'm an affection to SASE scientists, so it's my job to speak up. I have no other choice in my view, you know, That's all.
I read the column that you wrote. You had mentioned, I know you're the CDC. You're briefly on the COVID vaccine the Safety Technical work Group. It didn't last long because again, you know, they don't they don't like people who tell the truth or raised questions these days. But you had mentioned that something that didn't sit right you with you was that the randomized control trials for the
COVID vaccines were not properly designed. What do you mean by that and how does that impact I guess the safety of a vaccine or what we know about a vaccine safety.
So whenever drag or vaccine is approved by FDA, they have to do this. You need to do randomized trials to show that it works. And so the good thing with the COVID trials was that was randomized. That's a good thing. The bad thing was that the outcome they looked at was symptomatic disease. Now at all of this on artless. But I don't really care if you're homesick for a few days because I have to be in bed for two days. What I care about is if
you die. I don't want you to die. I don't want you to a little hospitalize either, So but that's what matters. But these trials, the randomized trials that was designed by fire Cera Moderna, they evaluated symptomatic COVID disease. They didn't evaluate mortality or they recorded it. But they recruited mostly young and middle aged adults, so they were going to survive COVID no matter what the vast majority,
whether they were on the vaccine or the placebo. So therefore it's not very informative in terms of seeing if it prevents mortality or not. It's the informative in terms of symptomatic disease, but that's only relevant or very little importance.
So they designed it wrongly.
And then and then they stop the trials too soon also, so they only monitor this for a few months, and we usually had trials that can go on for years and years for cancer drag or something like that. So that's also inappro inappropriate because that means we don't know. We don't have strong randomized evidence whether for the long time effect, both of efficacy and address reactions. So they
should have done designed these differently. And then they did correctly, I think, decide not to recruit people who had already had COVID and too when they had they had a few, but they sort of removed that from the analysis, and I think that was correct because we don't need these vaccines for those. But then what was wrong was even though it was tested on people without who hadn't had COVID, it was also man that for people who had already
had COVID. But you don't think it would would would work, Uh, we don't need So they were also using those trials to do extrapolation that we didn't know. They also didn't look at transmission. They could have done that if they wanted to, but they didn't. But CDC was anyhow arguing that this will stop transmission, which of course it didn't. So the trials were designed were flawed. That doesn't mean
that the vaccine didn't save some people's life. I think the vaccine did say in twenty twenty one, the lives of older people when it comes to yago people, I think is the big question mark, how what the benefit this creature was?
Quick break stay with us? You Also, the CDC sort of continuously changed the definition of what it means to be vaccinated, changed the definition of it, you know. I mean they kind of like twisted these things to meet the criteria of what they knew the vaccine was doing. Should we be worried about future vaccines? Has the process been like taged and diminished in the kind of vaccine, like the the what vaccines need to go through to
be put out to market? It just seems like the rush nature in this sort of the failures and making sure these were as safe and effective as they could be, sort of the twisting of definitions like should we be concerned about future vaccines? That sort of the approval process has now been diminished.
Yeah, So I think.
I understand why people don't trust vaccines anymore because the way that the COVID vaccine was handled was very poorly. So I understand that then people start questioning.
You the vaccines.
Like tribate vaccines, but I mean sound vaccines are very important, like the musle vaccines are very important, and the poorio vaccines.
But I don't know what the future.
I don't know if we will go back to doing it in a more thorough way that we used to do it, or if this is the new the new way of doing things, And if this is a new way of doing things, then nowahouldn't test that? And I think think CDC has an enormous trust problem, and I realized it themselves.
Now I don't know.
I don't think that quite realizes what is due to but we have a trust problem. My thinking, my principle is basic that if you have a scientist who refuses to debate other scientists of of who have a different perspective, you simply trust them.
We should always.
Trust scientists who are willing to put themselves out there and discuss and debate their views with other scientists who think differently.
Well, I think what's scary and where we are now which is not a good place to be in it And it's because of her, the failure of our public health officials and also mind you you know higher education like have Harvard firing people like you. Is that they've lost all this trust and lost all this faith over a virus. It even the CDC acknowledges now is essentially the flu right you know, even you had mentioned polio. Okay, so adults for polios at fifteen to thirty percent fatality rate,
that's a real fatality rate, right. So what happens if we have a virus in the future with a real, real fatality rate and you have an entire population that doesn't trust your public health officials now has a fear of vaccines, has a fear of what we're told. So it's like, you know what happens, then.
Well that's a problem. Supposed that comes a very serious pandemic. I suppose we come up with the vaccine that's perfect, no flaws. There are people who are not going to take the vaccine because they don't trust CDC or FJA anymore.
I mean, if you tell me to get it, I'll get it. But if the faucies of the world tell me, I'll tell them to pound stand. You know, I what if a thing I want to get you on because I thought this was interesting and totally a side note you had written in the column that you wrote in the column that you had about that you worked for human rights organization in Guatemala in nineteen eighty and you had two colleagues that were stabbed and a hand grenade that was thrown in the house where you all lived
and worked. Tell us about that story.
Yeah, So after it was a student, I worked as the human rights observing Guatemala in nineteen eighty nine, and this was during the military dictatorship there, so people who were opposing and was trying There was no freedom of speech, for example, so people who were speaking up, they were sometimes killed. Sometimes that just disappeared, was taken from the street and nobody knew what happened to them.
So there were several very brave Guatemalas.
There was the mothers of the disappears, for example, whose sons and daughters had been disappeared and who were sort of demonstrating and trying to find out what happened to their children. There were campusenos who was working against enforced military conscriptions. There were trade unionists, student groups, women's groups and so on who were oppressed because they didn't have the feedom of speech to speak cup. So we were there to accompany them as the international because the military
had were concerned about the international reputations. So I was walking around with these people. It's very brave Guatemalans to help protect them from something happening to them, and we were a nuisance to the military dictators. So at one point they tried to scare us away from the country. So two of my college were stabbed as they were working on the street, and at one point they threw hangunade into the house, our house where sort of everybody
lived and worked. So at that time, I guess I sort of risked my life to support the freedom of speech and democracy and the lives of people. So it was an easy decision to do the same other wriddle pandemic because while I was landed and there were takedowns from highest sources of them as director against me, I never I never risked my life to do during this pandemic.
So I guess what do you think the toughest part about that, about just going through COVID has has been for you? You know, I assume it's it's got to be really disheartening to have spent you know, your entire career really trying to help the public, inform the public, keep the public safe, and then to be slandered in the manner in which you've been, that's got to be that's got to be really frustrating.
I think the hardest part is so in the past when I meet new people and we talked and so what do you do? And I say, I'm a scientist. And I was always so proud to say, oh, I'm a scientist, and that was sort of my self identity and private entity. And now people ask I can no longer say that, I'm not long proud to say that I'm a scientist because I think science has failed, the scientists community has failed during this pandemic.
So and it's.
Disheartening that that the scientific community was not able to to to to sort of stand up and do the right thing during this pandemic. But uh basically did while they were told by the by the leadership in that of Foucy and others.
And that's true.
That's that's that's that's sad that we cannot be proud to be of being scientists anymore.
Where can people stay on top of your work? Where is the best place for them to find you?
So together with well they can reach They can see me on Twitter or LinkedIn other social media like cab or ghats through social but also with the able to try and Scott Atlas, we we have the sort of the Academy for Science and Freedom together with the Hillsdale College, which is an attempt to sort of restore the integrity of the scientific community. And that's maybe a long.
Well.
I never doubted that we will eventually prove the right about the pandemic when it comes to academia. I think it's the fifty fifty child that we're able to sort of steer the right ship in the right direction, versus is sort of going further downhill. So we'll see how that works, but at least you have to try it. So I've Kennedy for Science and Freedom.
Martin Colder, I just want to thank you. I've got to know a lot of you guys throughout COVID, and I just it really is brave what you guys have done. I don't think people really fully understand just what you guys have been put through, the thing, you know, just even attacks for your family, just all of it. And you really are a brave man, a good man, And I just want to thank you for the bottom of my heart for being so brave and really just fighting for the truth so fearlessly.
And thank you Lisa, because to be honest, I haven't. I don't have a very good esteemed to most journalists anymore, but you are shining light in the dark a professional there right now.
Thank you, sir. That means the world to me. I really appreciate you making the time. I'm looking forward to saying all the things that you guys accomplish at Hillsdale and just everything moving forward, and just really appreciate you.
Thank you, thanks for having me on.
That was doctor Martin Kolder. Just really appreciate him making the time. He's a good man, he's a brave man. I want to thank you guys at home for listening. I also want to think John Cassio and my producer for putting the show together. Until next time,