PROFILE: Martin Kulldorff, NIH Vaccine-Autism Grant Consultant
COVID-19's Wrongest Cheerleader Is Back
Martin Kulldorff is an ex-Harvard academic and co-author of a worthless online petition singing the praises of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, called the "Great Barrington Declaration." His Twitter bio claims he is an epidemiologist and biostatistician, meaning he enjoyed the luxury of talking nonsense about COVID-19 from behind the safety of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet without seeing what the virus was doing to real human lives.
Now this anti-vaccine quack is back in the news, lending a hand to fellow GBD author Jay Bhattacharya's failing National Institute of Health by designing grant proposals to study the long and overwhelmingly debunked myth that vaccines somehow cause autism. Just like Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya, Kulldorff's record on COVID-19 is completely depraved, unscientific, and utterly indefensible, only further lending credibility to the accusation that the NIH is being converted into an embarrassment of a propaganda mill.
This is not science, much less "gold-standard evidence-based medicine." This is a sick joke being played on the American public. Let's review Martin Kulldorff's long legacy of undeniable, incompetent failures. Most of these quotes come from his Twitter account - “MartinKulldorff” - unless stated otherwise.
2020
April 29th, 2020: As hospitals were overwhelmed in New York City and countless Americans were dying in droves thanks to a new SARS virus, Martin decided that, as a “professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School,” his most valuable contribution would be to encourage even more infections that inevitably led to death and disability:
A fangirl of Martin's, Stacey Rudin, screeched on Twitter:
"You are the one killing people with your anti-herder stance."
Never before in history have pandemics been ended via mass infection.
May 5th, 2020: Knowing nothing about a brand new SARS virus, Martin championed Sweden's failed mass infection strategy as a model for the world to follow: "Daily reported COVID-19 cases has dropped to half in Stockholm, where herd immunity will arrive first, while it is currently flat in the rest of Sweden."
This would not come to pass. Martin never apologized for this error.
August 17th, 2020: Even after it was well-documented that SARS viruses can cause serious long-term health issues - back in 2010 - alleged Harvard expert Martin Kulldorff was excited to see his kids infected with COVID-19:
"I am not worried about my kids. For them, COVID19 is less dangerous than influenza. Better for them to be exposed as a child than as an adult."
This was a common anti-vaccine myth shared by fellow pestilence sycophant Jay Bhattacharya, who is now NIH Director. These academic creeps can’t even survive basic arithmetic - yet are now empowered to deny your kids lifesaving vaccines.
October 22nd, 2020: In a useless opinion editorial for USA Today, Martin Kulldorff would insist that any measures to prevent COVID-19 deaths were "the worst assault on the working class since segregation and the Vietnam War." Bankrolled by fossil fuel billionaires, these dishonest cranks insisted that they were actually left-wing heroes of the working-class line cooks dying of COVID-19 in 2020 - pretending that it would somehow be better if lawyers and stock brokers were dying alongside them. Sadly, certain lefty social media personalities like Jimmy Dore and Max Blumenthal fell for this, shamelessly platforming right-wing propaganda.
December 24th, 2020: Just as the COVID-19 vaccine was beginning to be rolled out, Martin sang the praises of the virus for Christmas Eve: "If the young live normal lives, some will be infected, but their risk is less than from lockdown collateral damage. Pandemic will then be naturally over in 3-6 months. Lockdowns just prolonged the pandemic while completely failing to protect the old."
There was no contingency plan for when this approach inevitably failed.
2021
March 15, 2021: After COVID-19 had already killed hundreds of unvaccinated children, Martin Kulldorff bravely declared from behind the safety of a keyboard that:
"COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children."
Now? Thousands of American children are dead - many more disabled - overwhelmingly unvaccinated and reinfected multiple times.
Martin never apologized for this grave error.
April 15th, 2021: Quoted in an article for the same AIER that hosted the GBD, Kulldorff derided PPE for kids, exclaiming "They don't need it for their own protection," The pediatric COVID-19 death toll would be over 1,000 before the end of the year, "and they don't need it for protecting other people either." Hundreds of thousands of American children have lost a primary caregiver since after bringing the virus home from school. Martin did not consider how this might impact children's education, being forced to play a role in the death of a parent.
June 9th, 2021: Martin insists that infection of the original strain of COVID-19 in 2020 conferred lifelong immunity against all variants. Martin Kulldorff provided no evidence to support this claim.
June 17th, 2021: Martin would write an opinion editorial with his GBD friend Bhattacharya in The Hill, titled "The ill-advised push to vaccinate the young," in which they falsely claimed:
"The idea that everyone must be vaccinated against COVID-19 is as misguided as the anti-vax idea that no one should. The former is more dangerous for public health."
This is a dishonestly false statement, as anyone with a basic understanding of vaccines can tell you. Of course, fearmongering about a new vaccine in a time of global crisis has always been a profitable venture.
October 24th, 2021: When it became clear that parents were dying because their children were bringing home COVID-19 from school, Martin whined:
"For thousands of years, disease pathogens have spread from person to person. Never before have carriers been blamed for infecting the next sick person. That is a very dangerous ideology."
Of course, Martin proposed organizing society to gleefully spread the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen from person to person, knowing this would kill countless Americans. Martin and his ilk demand we had embraced this viral slaughter, and all future pandemic events, with a smile.
October 26th, 2021: For the Epoch Times, an anti-vaccine propaganda outlet run by the Falun Gong cult, Martin took up the mantle of "American Thought Leader" to ramble on about "The Triumph of Natural Immunity," claiming "Since the Athenian plague in 430 B.C. ... we have known about natural immunity. So it's strange that suddenly people are questioning that." This is a twisted sleight-of-hand trick, as history shows that many of the survivors of the Athenian Plague had the disease come back in what is theorized to be Brill's disease-typhus.
October 31st, 2021: In his commitment to science and education, Martin Kulldorff would join another fake institution, the "Brownstone Institute," as "Senior Scientific Director." Brownstone is owned by a white nationalist libertarian pervert who believes teenage girls should be pulled out of public education and instead given a pack of Virginia Slims alongside a Hooters uniform. Very scientific!
November 1st, 2021: Martin and Jay Bhattacharya publish a terrible Newsweek opinion-editorial titled: "How Fauci Fooled America," contributing to the smear campaign that inevitably resulted in violent threats on Anthony Fauci's life, and even sexual threats against his wife and daughters. Martin and Jay never apologized for enabling and profiting from this abuse, as the censorship of real doctors and scientists was always their true agenda.
November 11th, 2021: Writing in the Alachua Chronicle, Martin and Jay write another opinion-editorial titled "Vaccine Mandates Are Unethical," contradicting a 1905 Supreme Court ruling with no evidence to support their claim, while the long history of mandated vaccines have saved countless millions worldwide. While anti-vaccine crusaders have made arguments so incompetent to imply the existence of time-travelling vaccines, evidence showing humans being capable of the same impossible feat remains elusive.
December 22nd, 2021: During a horrific winter for COVID-19, Martin declared:
"If we had done focused protection, as outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration, the pandemic would have been over now with fewer Covid deaths and less collateral public health damage."
Martin provides no evidence to support this claim. It's merely abstract fantasy. Now, Martin Kulldorff will be working to make Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s fantasy of children dying from infectious diseases a reality.
December 28th, 2021: Martin admits that he wanted even more unvaccinated Americans dying of SARS-CoV-2 in Spring 2020:
"Lockdowns: -postpone infections, prolonging the pandemic - generate more contagious variants, increasing herd immunity threshold needed for endemic stage"
Martin would provide no evidence to support his outlandish claim that preventing infections in one person encouraged the virus to mutate into a more contagious variant in an infected person.
December 29th, 2021: Martin admits he wanted everyone reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 regularly:
"The pandemic ends when enough people have natural immunity after Covid recovery. With herd immunity, we then enter the endemic stage."
He saw the population being reinfected with COVID-19 regularly as a goal worth shooting for, ignorant of the many well documented harms caused by this virus. Martin offered no ideas of how to treat those disabled by his favorite virus.
2022
January 20th, 2022: During the worst month for pediatric COVID-19 deaths in America, Martin declares:
"Lockdowns just postponed the inevitable, while causing enormous collateral damage on cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, tuberculosis, mental health, education"
Firstly, it's clear that Martin Kulldorff never concerned himself what was happening in hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Not schools either, as dead educators can't do much teaching.
Would Martin be brave enough to tell the thousands of parents of children who died of COVID-19 in America that they should have buried their child in Spring 2020, because it was merely inevitable that the virus Martin wanted to infect them with would kill them?
February 10th, 2022: In a brutally ignorant statement about the past several decades of medical science, Kulldorff declares:
"The denial of natural immunity after Covid disease is the worst unscientific folly in the past 75 years. How will universities and hospitals recover public trust after that?"
Of course, "immunity" isn't very practical for the general public if they're developing serious health issues such as cognitive impairment after their 3rd or 5th bout with the virus. Go search for "Since I [had/got] Covid on Twitter" and have a gander for yourself. First-time readers: Welcome to my nightmare!
March 6th, 2022: Martin and Jay furthered their tired old smear of vaccine advocates in another op-ed for the Epoch Times, "How vaccine fanatics fueled vaccine skepticism," accepting no responsibility for their highly profitable, yet completely unscientific fearmongering.
March 8th, 2022: For the unscientific propaganda outlet "The Brownstone Institute," Martin Kulldorff, who is not a medical doctor, much less a pediatrician, advised parents not to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, claiming "For children, the mortality risk is very small and the known and any still unknown risks from adverse reactions may outweigh the benefits at reducing hospitalizations and death from COVID, which are unfortunately still unknown." This is a perversely dishonest argument only showing Martin's ignorance:
Now in 2025, a growing mountain of peer-reviewing medical research shows well-documented harms caused by repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections. The same cannot be said for the vaccine. Now there are thousands of American parents who have had to bury child because quacks like Kulldorff told them not to vaccinate their children - this doesn't matter, because Martin's priority is parading around as some sort of "dissident scientist,” sipping champagne in wealthy estates.
In truth, Martin wanted these children infected with a virus he knew nothing about - repeatedly. It made him happy to see the virus hurting kids, knowing only the supposedly weak, "the very sick," would die - just like Martin's new boss RFK Jr.
April 29th, 2022: Even after it became obvious that Anders Tegnell betrayed the Swedish taxpayer as Swedish State Epidemiologist - listening to obnoxious conspiracy theorists on social media like "FatEmperor" over hardworking scientific researchers - Martin endorsed Tegnell to be the next director general of the WHO.
May 15th, 2022: Martin celebrates unvaccinated children being infected with COVID-19 for The Epoch Times, claiming: "75% of American children have already had covid, providing strong natural immunity against future infection." Martin has never apologized for this obvious error, even now that we have American children who have been disabled after repeated bouts with the virus.
September 12th, 2022:
"In 2020, I was a lonely voice in the Twitter wilderness, opposing lockdowns with a few scattered friends. In 2022, I am preaching to the choir; a choir with a wonderful, beautiful voice. Thank you for singing!"
This is a tactic admission that Martin Kulldorff is not a serious intellectual interested in free-thinking and debate; he wanted to cultivate an echo chamber of adoring fans - exploiting a horrific global catastrophe in the hopes of becoming a Z-list celebrity. Do you really think you can trust a word Martin might say about vaccines and autism?
October 13th, 2022:
"There is no contradiction between freedom and public health. Freedom is a requisite for good public health."
This statement is especially ironic, considering Martin wants to surrender American children to the tyranny of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, which had already killed well over a thousand kids by this point. There isn't much freedom when you're dead.
October 17th, 2022: Martin and Bhattacharya would publish a paper titled, "Understanding the exceptional pre-vaccination Era East Asian COVID-19 outcomes" in which they argued that East Asians had pre-existing immunity to COVID-19, based upon...magical thinking. In reality, East Asian countries replied upon NPIs such as masking, which prevented infections, breaking the chains of transmission that killed so many Americans. This fact conflicted with Martin & Jay's fantasy, so they started making things up.
November 23rd, 2022: After it became clear that InfinityCOVID radicalism was making children very sick and disrupting education, Martin Kulldorff publicly mocked an MD calling for mitigation measures, saying:
"Maybe schools should require children to wear funny Yankee hats for a few weeks. There are no randomized trials to show they work, but who cares. Isn't the goal to keep kids in school?"
Of course, this enlightened Harvard academic should be smart enough to know that PPE effectiveness is not evaluated with randomized control trials - and mocking millions of sick and suffering children is the sign that Martin never actually cared about pediatric health or education. Now he's going to help RFK Jr. prove that vaccines cause autism in children - all for another chance to bask in the spotlight.
November 24th, 2022: The next day in an unprofessional outburst, Martin squeals:
"If you want to mask school children, conduct a randomized trial to prove it works. That is the scientific method. Until you do, shut up!"
Martin wanted to bully, silence, and sensor those who sought to protect children from the harms caused by SARS-CoV-2. Now he wants to deny the harms of other infectious diseases by denying children lifesaving vaccines on behalf of RFK Jr's agenda. This was never about a single virus. This entire agenda is about helping every virus harm as many American families as possible.
December 13th, 2022: Establishing a pattern of behavior of a kissass to unscientific contrarians, Martin joins a new fake organization:
"Florida [Governor Ron DeSantis] is setting up an evidence based Public Health Integrity Committee as we can no longer trust CDC. I am honored to serve as one of its members together with [Jay Bhattacharya,] [Tracy Beth Hoeg,] StabellBenn, [Bret Weinstein,] stemplet74, [Joeseph Fraiman] et al."
Ironically, the "PHIC" under Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo would go on to do nothing but spread medical disinformation, including altering study results to fearmonger about the COVID-19 vaccine. Martin never condemned this misconduct.
December 14th, 2022: In a wildly unprofessional and inappropriate rant, Martin Kulldorff proclaimed:
"Faucism and Fascism are not the same, but there are some similarities:
-Blind belief in an all-knowing leader
-Government-corporate partnership
-Censoring and blacklisting opponents
-Disregarding scientific principles and knowledge
-Harming workers and the poor -Scapegoating"
Anti-vaccine quacks like Martin Kulldorff's crowd, including RFK Jr. and Vinay Prasad, have foolishly compared lifesaving public health mitigations to the Third Reich before. Ironically, Nazi "scholarship" believes pandemics are a net-positive for society, getting rid of imagined “useless eaters” these viruses kill.
December 24th, 2022: After spending years gaining popularity by smearing doctors and scientists on social media, Martin Kulldorff proclaimed on Christmas Eve that:
"Trust in medicine is broken. The culprits? A vocal minority of MDs who got the pandemic wrong: promoting school closures and other lockdowns, not protecting high-risk elderly, denying natural immunity, pushing mask and vaccine mandates, and censoring/slandering opponents."
Kulldorff's dishonesty strikes again, rejecting the reality that the overwhelming majority of doctors and scientists rejected his online petition from fall 2020, when a vaccine was just weeks away. Martin refused to acknowledge that there was a public debate, and his side simply lost.
The National Institute of Health should not be compromised by those this detached from the scientific realities of our actual world.
2023
March 14th, 2023: Showing up on fellow loudmouth Scott Atlas' internet show, Kulldorff whined:
"To have university presidents require vaccines for people who have had Covid - that is defacto denial of infection-acquired immunity...that's just as absurd as denying the earth is round."
In reality, immunity is short-lived and reinfections are common. This is projection from Martin; his loudest supporters believe in such nonsense like “chemtrails” or a pizza restaurant hosting a child sex-trafficking ring.
April 1st, 2023: In a sick and twisted April Fool's prank when it became clear that Martin's favorite virus, SARS-CoV-2, was causing significant disability, Kulldorff shared a "study" from Europe which he claims - air quotes his:
"'Long-Covid' equally common among young people who did and did not have Covid...more likely caused by low physical activity and loneliness"
Yes, Martin tried to blame "lockdowns" for the disability caused by his favorite SARS virus. This is the unserious, rank dishonesty that is now helping Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "prove" vaccines cause autism.
June 7th, 2023: In another dangerous rewriting of definitions, Martin declares:
"With [Jay Bhattacharya] and Scott Atlas, I will teach critical thinking to medical and public health students, August 2-6 in Connecticut. Please apply for our [Academic Scientific Freedom] fellowship."
Apparently, "critical thinking" is when you get basic facts wrong about a topic you know nothing about for years and refuse to acknowledge your errors. "Critical failure" would be a more accurate definition.
September 22nd, 2023: In a bizarre endorsement of flat earthers, intelligent design, and the Earth being only 5,000 years old, Martin publishes an opinion-editorial in "The Spectator" titled "We're fighting the Covid censors." Kulldorff claims:
"When there is scientific disagreement or uncertainty, the government must never pretend there is consensus and certainty."
This is hilarious. The same wealthy interests who profit from the burning of fossil fuels, which fund Martin Kulldorff & Jay Bhattacharya, also bankroll propaganda that pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gasses don't have any negative impacts on the environment's ability to sustain human life.
Both fronts of denialism are in the extreme minority against an overwhelming scientific consensus. The debate’s over!
December 10th, 2023: Years after it was proven that repeated COVID-19 infections did not confer meaningful immunity, but instead a greater risk for serious health issues, Martin Kulldorff would declare:
"University presidents should not violate their students' freedom. Infection-acquired immunity is a fact, so Covid Vaccine mandates are both anti-science and anti-freedom."
After demanding that countless millions of Americans surrender to the tyranny of an uncaring virus, Kulldorff spread misinformation to prevent the public from learning about the protection a COVID-19 vaccine provides, as immunity (in any form) wanes over time. In truth, Martin simply refused a sore arm for added protection against a virus which nearly killed him, so he could be popular on social media.
2024
March 11th, 2024: After nearly dying of COVID-19 and being placed on administrative leave from Harvard for refusing to comply with a vaccine mandate, Martin Kulldorff would be terminated. Sadly, his fellow travellers were not humiliated with the same fate. Martin would whine:
"The public should not trust scientists, even Harvard scientists, unwilling to debate their positions with fellow scientists."
This is darkly hilarious projection. Part of the competitive nature of an honest debate is admitting when you are dead wrong, and your opponent has you dead-to-rights. Martin has never wanted a "debate," as he has refused to admit error and falsely portray himself as an intellectual champion after years and years of his numerous factual errors being pointed out.
October 4th, 2024: Let’s go back in time for for years, to start:
While headlines like this were commonplace in October 2020, 2024 was suddenly a very different realm for Martin Kulldorff:
"Four years ago today, with [Sunetra Gupta] and [Jay Bhattacharya,] we published the [Great Barrington Declaration,] advocating focused protection instead of school closures and other lockdowns. Thank you all 940,000 co-signers. We were proven right!!"
Regarding this useless online petition, just who is “we” in this picture? Were Dr. Fakename and Dr. Bananas treating patients in overwhelmed ICUs? Does Martin Kulldorff and his ilk struggle with “imaginary friends?”
December 23rd, 2024: After disgracing himself on behalf of SARS, Martin decided that the only way he'd have a career again is following in Jay Bhattacharya's footsteps:
"Don't preach to the choir. The ONLY way to restore vaccine confidene is to put a vaccine skeptic like [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] in charge of an evidence-based vaccine research agenda."
After sucking up to an exploitative charlatan on social media, Martin Kulldorff is now at the NIH helping to advance the agenda of RFK Jr. - but let’s make one thing absolutely clear, for those of you who survived this far:
Children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases so corrupt old men can make a mockery of science and medicine is completely unacceptable.
This is not open to debate.
2025
January 11th, 2025: As countless thousands of doctors who actually treat patients decried anti-vaccine grifter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's appointment to Secretary of Health & Human Services, Martin abandoned science & medicine to leap to RFK Jr's defense, proclaiming:
"The 15,000 physicians (<2%) who were wrong about the unscientific Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates are no opposing [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] though he was correct and wants to restore evidence based medicine. That's gaslighting of the highest order."
Literally every part of this statement is wrong in one form or another, beyond the fact that it's a disgrace more physicians didn't stand up. Martin Kulldorff has now been rewarded for his loyalty with a gig at the National Institute of Health in advancing RFK Jr.'s twisted agenda. Kissing ass on social media is the new standard for advancing your career in medicine and science.
February 05th, 2025: Knowing that none of these propagandists' "scientific papers" might survive peer review in a serious medical journal, Martin Kulldorff and his fellow travellers decided to kick off yet another fake organization:
“Enhancing transparency and open scientific discourse, we are launching the Journal of the Academy of Public Health (RCJAPH) with open peer review that all can read and where good scientists can publish whatever their studies conclude.”
This is quite adorable. As my colleague in B.S. handling, John Bye, explains:
"Indeed, the rules of the 'Academy of Public Health' state that the journal's editor CAN'T reject papers by members, unless they're irrelevant or defamatory, however bad the peer reviews are. And the editor decides who peer reviews submissions anyway."
This is a completely unprecedented, totally unprofessional standard that exists solely to make a mockery of science in service of propaganda and political agendas. Why should your facts override my feelings? As a scholar of "Gold-Standard Evidence-Based Medicine," the evidence is what I say it is.
April 15th, 2025: Pushing the anti-vax myth that SARS-CoV-2, unlike the countless other viruses we vaccinate children against, is a benevolent friend to kids, Martin Kulldorff blames advocates for the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine for America’s historic measles outbreaks under a new, anti-vaccine Medical Establishment:
"In 2020/21 we accurately predicted that plummeting childhood vaccination rates due to lockdowns and Covid vaccine mandates would eventually cause outbreaks, but [Dr. Paul Offit's] response was abysmal. He is partly to blame for these outbreaks."
Of course, Martin provides no evidence to support this claim. In reality, insisting that children do not need protection from infectious diseases such as SARS-CoV-2, only encourages parents to not protect their children from other infectious diseases. Martin and his ilk are merely washing the blood from their hands that their pro-infection advocacy caused, attempting to project their failures onto others.
Don't fall for it.
April 18th, 2025: In their scorched earth campaign to destroy federal resources for COVID-19, of which the Trump administration's mismanagement sunk his 2020 campaign, the Trump Admin. updated the covid.gov website with senseless disinformation.
Martin leaped with excitement to his Twitter account, endorsing this change with:
"The the government has finally acknowledged the enormous collateral damage from pandemic school closures, lockdowns, mandates and censorship. Time to return to evidence-based science and free speech."
This is quite an odd statement, since in this document alone, it's apparent that Martin Kulldorff never stopped running his mouth, making completely evidence-free claims - even when he met with Trump in the Oval Office in 2020. Instead, he told others to "shut up" and embrace SARS-CoV-2.
May 2nd, 2025: Walker Bragman would report for the AJI: "RFK Jr.'s $50M NIH autism research project is being shaped by COVID vaccine skeptics Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff - both with ties to anti-vax groups. Experts fear it's a political ploy, not real science." Those fears are well-placed.
Closing Thoughts
Martin Kulldorff built himself an impressive resume of being consistency incorrect about medical science. Martin covered for these errors with his arrogance, refusing to admit his incompetence, replacing hard technical science with wild fantasy. He was overjoyed to see the virus getting kids very sick, hospitalized, and killed in pursuit of an "endemic" phase, denying the harms of the virus he became a cheerleader for.
Giving Martin Kulldorff a gig at the National Institute of Health, aiding HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his crusade to demonize vaccines and unleash infectious diseases beyond COVID-19 on America's children, is utterly perverse. These are sick old men who hope to see children suffer and die needlessly, knowing absolutely nothing about medicine or science - excited to mock and indict the very doctors and nurses who will have to clean up the mess they inevitably make.
Above is the evidence which establishes this claim is not merely a thoughtless opinion, but instead a well-documented fact:
Martin Kulldorff is a disgrace.
