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Joe Rogan Experience #1671 - Bret Weinstein & Dr. Pierre Kory

Dr. Pierre Kory is an ICU and lung specialist who is an expert on the use of the drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, visiting fellow at Princeton, host of the DarkHorse podcast, and co-author (with his wife, Heather Heying) of the forthcoming "A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century."

Dr. Pierre KoryguestBret WeinsteinguestJoe RoganhostGuest (Bret Weinstein or Dr. Pierre Kory)guest
Jun 27, 20242h 54mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. PK

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. BW

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) So, this is the first of ... I've never had to do an emergency podcast before. But it, I feel like we do. And Brett, you and I have been in communication about this and this se- seemed like something that we have to do quicker than later. Um, let's explain what's going on. Uh, you guys have had conversations, uh, first of all, uh, Dr. Kory, please explain who you are and introduce yourself.

    4. PK

      Yeah, sure. So, (clears throat) I'm a lung and ICU specialist, um, who's part of a group of, um, other ICU specialists. We came together early in the pandemic, uh, to develop treatment protocols for COVID. Um, we first developed a hospital treatment protocol back in March, um, and then more recently, we have an outpatient treatment protocol centered around the drug Ivermectin, and I'll just say, through our work, um, I would say we are probably the foremost experts on the use of Ivermectin and COVID in the world.

    5. JR

      And how did you, uh, Brett, how did you get involved with Dr. Kory, and how did your initial conversation get in, uh, get started? What's ...

    6. BW

      Well, Heather and I have been podcasting on the developing COVID story, uh, for quite some time. We started very early and, uh, we actually, I just took the Dark Horse podcast, which had been just me talking to people, and Heather and I started live streaming twice a week at first. And at first, we were just simply looking at the evidence on COVID, what it is, how it transmits, how it should change your behavior. You know, in those early days, it was scary. We didn't know if it was transmitted on surfaces or what. So, Heather and I just, uh, did our analysis live, or not live. I guess it was live, but in any case, the two of us just, uh, had discussions about what we thought the evidence meant and we presented papers that we were reading in the literature.

    7. JR

      And we should explain your credentials, like what ...

    8. BW

      I'm a, I'm a biologist. I'm an evolutionary biologist. Um, the importance of evolution here is that A, all of the things that we're talking about with COVID are evolutionary. Obviously, the virus is evolved. Epidemiology is an evolutionary, uh, process. The immune system is both a, a product of evolution and it evolves in real time when you have an infection. So, evolution is a kind of good generalist toolkit to apply to something like COVID. But in any case, as we were working through the various emerging evidence and figuring out what we believed and what we didn't and why, we ran into Ivermectin, and there was this indication that it was effective against COVID, and we didn't know what to make of it. We didn't know whether or not there was something-

    9. JR

      What was the, where was the initial indication from?

    10. BW

      I, I can't recall. Actually, Pierre might have some idea where we would've encountered it in, you know, April or ...

    11. PK

      Yeah. Yeah, so ...

    12. BW

      ... 2020.

    13. PK

      Um, you know, just also, Joe, just for a little bit more background, 'cause I, I do wanna emphasize that, you know, although I'm here today talking, uh, my group, the, the five of us, we call ourselves the, the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, uh, we're led by Dr. Paul Marek, a very famous guy in our specialty. In fact, he's the, uh, most published intensivist in the world. That's what we are, uh, ICU docs. And, um, people came to him to develop protocols, and so he grabbed his, his four closest colleagues and friends of which I'm honored to be one. I'm a good friend of his and, um, he's a mentor to me. And we've studied ... We basically started putting together protocols that we took from other critical illnesses that we're expert at, and we applied them to COVID, and we learned everything we could around COVID. We just read papers and papers and papers, and we followed all the therapeutics that were being trialed and tested around the world, and Ivermectin, the first, uh, paper was last about March or April, but it came out of a lab. It was just like what's called a cell culture model. It wasn't tested in humans. But this cell culture model showed that if you applied Ivermectin to these, uh, it was actually monkey kidney cells, the virus was essentially eradicated within 48 hours. They could find almost no viral material, um, when they used Ivermectin in this cell culture model. Some places around the world took that bench study (laughs) and brought it out into clinical use. And I call that, you know, the bench to the bedside, and if you know anything about medicine development, very few what we call molecules make it from the bench to the bedside. Um, and so ... But it was an emergency, right? It was a pandemic. And so there were areas around the world that they so- just said, "You know, it looks like it might work." It's a safe drug. It's a very well-known drug, right? So, (clears throat) people used it. And so that, that was the first signal, was just from a cell culture model.

    14. JR

      So, it was a, it's a well-known drug.

    15. PK

      (coughs)

    16. JR

      It's been in use for 40-plus years, and, uh, the issue became that discussing this and discussing what you just said on YouTube led to your channel getting now one strike on one channel and is it three strikes on your clips channel?

    17. BW

      No. We have, uh, and YouTube has behaved very bizarrely with respect to our channels. They've delivered one strike to each channel, one warning to each channel, and they have removed many videos, but they've played a game with their accounting system, where they've removed multiple videos, filed them under a single warning. So, it's not clear what they are doing or why, but it is clear that they don't want certain things discussed. And, um ...

    18. JR

      What has been their explanation? We actually got an official explanation from YouTube. Maybe we should read that.Maybe we should just read what their response has been, 'cause the, the response has essentially been they, they have one, is it the CDC that they'll tolerate, or that they'll, they'll agree to listen to them? Because obviously it can't be everybody now-

    19. PK

      So-

    20. JR

      ... because we have the WHO is now saying that you shouldn't vaccinate children. They're not recommending you vaccinate children or pregnant people, right?

    21. PK

      So-

    22. JR

      Is that okay, that, but l- we, we should be clear about this, right? That's correct, right?

    23. PK

      Well, there's a number of different agencies, like you just mentioned, right?

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. PK

      In the US, um, and actually, I don't know which agency those different social media channels are basing what they're considering approved therapies or unapproved therapies.

    26. JR

      I think, I think it's the CDC. Isn't that-

    27. PK

      Well-

    28. JR

      Yes. Is that what it is, what YouTube quoted Tim as-

    29. BW

      It says, "The CDC, FDA, and other local health authorities."

    30. JR

      Right. But if you, up until recently, if you said, "I don't think children should get vaccinated," they would pull that.

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Oh, yes. …

    1. JR

      is it debated, uh, amongst practitioners?

    2. PK

      Oh, yes.

    3. BW

      It, it was, it was debated.

    4. PK

      Yes.

    5. JR

      And s-

    6. BW

      The problem is it took time for it to become clear that this was, uh, transmitted in this airborne form. And part of, there's partly the, we've got a confusion, right? So what's happening is COVID is highly effective at transmitting in part because it just saturates the air, right? It, it gets into these very little particles which don't do what the initial model said, right? The initial model had it in large droplets which only spend a little bit of time in the air, right? And so the air clears because they hit the ground due to gravity.

    7. JR

      Hence the six foot social distancing.

    8. BW

      Right.

    9. PK

      Right.

    10. BW

      But, you know, and actually this was one of the places where Heather and I were way ahead. We were beginning to detect that there was something about, there was something about the fact that time spent in a room in which somebody had had COVID was creating these super-spreader events, which was suggesting that this wasn't a highly proximity dependent. That's, that basically, you know, there was a clock ticking and the room filled up with the stuff and if the window was open, it filled up a lot slower. That kind of thing, right?

    11. PK

      Mm-hmm.

    12. BW

      So we were building this in real time from what we were reading in these papers which frankly mostly had not been peer reviewed because there was no time. These were pre-prints, right? So you could begin to see this story develop and you could begin to see the dawning awareness. And what Pierre is saying, is effect- I forget which of the organizations does not, is not yet up to date on airborne transmission.

    13. PK

      Well, uh, the WHO is not yet up to date. The, the CDC did about a month ago. Uh, they, they did make a formal statement that they believe it's airborne.

    14. JR

      Is it safe to say they're waiting for a preponderance of evidence?

    15. PK

      The WHO? Um, uh, that's a (laughs) ... That's not a short answer. The WHO is a very complex organization. I don't know what... I, I think there's so many influences at the WHO. I think there's other factors that are making them reluctant to call airborne transmission. Because of the implications that would have around infection control, resources, N95. That, the- this is just me theorizing. I'm ... I can't pretend to understand the WHO. I know that that organization has been well described now for over 20 years to be highly susceptible to many outside influence.

    16. JR

      And if you want-

    17. PK

      Economic and political.

    18. JR

      ... evidence of that, just look at that one video where there was a journalist was trying to get the person from the WHO to even say Taiwan. To even talk about Taiwan.

    19. PK

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      And they literally disconnected their computer and then came back on and would not say the name Taiwan because China does not recognize Taiwan as a country. And then they said I think China's doing a great job, let's continue. Let's move past this. And they wanted to quickly brush it away and it, it's glaringly obvious that there's an influence-

    21. BW

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      ... in that regard.

    23. BW

      It, it is. And also I think the question that you're really asking is, is there a defense of-

    24. JR

      Yes.

    25. BW

      ... being cautious about this conclusion?

    26. JR

      Exactly.

    27. BW

      And the answer is no. That, that ship sailed-

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. BW

      ... um, the better part of a year ago this was obvious. And the fact is it's em- it's crucial. People need to understand-

    30. JR

      (exhales) That's true.

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. BW

      in officialdom is the opposite, and the key thing to track is this word consensus, right? Scientific consensus is two almost opposite things in this case. Scientific consensus, a normal scientific consensus looks like, you know, plate tectonics, right? Plate tectonics was an absolutely heretical idea when it was introduced. The idea that the continents are moving, wow. That was mind-bluing- blowing, and almost nobody got it at first, right? Today, everybody gets it. We all understand the continents move and we understand how, right? We know about subduction zones and these things, and we've got a model that makes it make sense. And you could present something that would challenge plate tectonics. You could do that. But, you know, you've got an uphill struggle because we have arrived at this through a lot of study, right? And the evidence is really strong. And so there is a consensus about it. Consensus that shows up like that (snaps fingers) in the middle of an emerging-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BW

      ... pandemic, right, where you've got a brand new pathogen which we know very little about... Uh, I remember going out of the house wearing sacrificial gloves, cotton gloves, that I knew I could touch things and then when I got home, I could throw them away or I could wash them, right?I stopped doing that almost instantly as it became clear that actually, although many viruses do transmit from service- surfaces, this one doesn't. Right? It's not to say it can't happen ever, but almost never. Right? That's not its mode of transmission.

    4. JR

      Correct.

    5. BW

      So the point is, the consensus arises from the work, from people challenging each other and discovering that, yeah, that thing seemed to make sense, but it doesn't add up when you look at the evidence. Right? That's how the consensus happens. These consensus, these consenses that we are being handed about how this virus works, what works to fight it, what doesn't work to fight it, what you should do in order to protect yourself, these things are being handed down from on high. And then they are silencing the people who are saying, "Hey, wait a minute. That thing you just told me from on high doesn't square with all the stuff I can see." Right? So they are shutting down the challenge to a consensus that has no right to be labeled as scientific because it isn't. It didn't arise through the normal process. It isn't what most people think. It is, it is an official position. Right? That is not a scientific consensus. And the lab leak is the perfect example of this because behind the scenes, a lot of people understood that the story they were being told wasn't right, that there was something very conspicuous about the coincidence of this virus emerging in Wuhan on the doorstep of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Lots of people understood that. Very few were willing to say it in public. And so that leads me to the thing that I think you need to track, which is you've got a bunch of heretics who are saying things about ivermectin, about the hazards of vaccines, about all of these topics. Who do you believe? Are you gonna believe the heretics? Well, the heretics actually are an interesting group, and the thing that unites them seems to be their independence of the structures-

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. BW

      ... that are controlling others. Right?

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. BW

      So what, what do you make of it when the people who are free, who don't have to answer to their department chair, right, are saying one thing, and the people who are signed up for some system that holds their well-being in its hands are saying the other thing, right? And in this case, YouTube is playing this weird role, right? I'm free. I can talk about scientific evidence. But in order to talk about it with my audience-

    10. JR

      (coughs)

    11. BW

      ... I have to go through YouTube, right? So YouTube is playing like it's my department chair and it wants me to shut up about certain topics, and it's going to turn up the heat on me until I do, which I won't. But nonetheless, that's the point, is something would like to limit the discussion so that we are all on the same page on topics where we couldn't possibly all be on the same page.

    12. JR

      Not only that, they're trying to limit the discussion when if you watch your videos and you listen to either Heather, yourself, or Dr. Kory or any of these other guests that you've had, all you are going to see is rational discussion of the facts, and the facts presented with real data. And when you censor that, we have a real problem, and it's never good. And there's this weird sort of dismissive, uh, air that people have about these things. This, the, the propaganda in this regard has been so effective. Um, I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and they were discussing different treatments and how videos are being pulled, uh, and how, and they brought up ivermectin, and this other person that was with them said, "Good, because, you know, there's too much bad information out there. They should pull that stuff." And he had to explain, "No, this is actually ivermectin. There actually is some evidence to support its use, and it could be extremely beneficial to people, particularly in early stages of the disease." And the only way we're gonna know about this is if it gets discussed, if more doctors hear about this, more people hear about this, more studies emerge, and then that may become the new consensus if we're allowed to look at the facts. Not we, but you guys are allowed to look at the facts and discuss them openly. If you're not, we have a real problem because now we're relying only on the organizations that have already shown that sometimes they're wrong.

    13. BW

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      So if that's the only way we get our information, we, we may be wrong, and lives are in danger if we're wrong.

    15. BW

      Oh, absolutely.

    16. JR

      I wanna, I wanna-

    17. BW

      We will lose lives if we cannot sort out where... I mean, even if those agencies were perfectly immune to capture, we have to be able to figure out where they've got it wrong so that they can get smarter, right?

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. BW

      (clears throat)

    20. JR

      And the more intelligent people that understand the data, looking at it and discussing it openly, the better for everybody. Again-

    21. BW

      Absolutely.

    22. JR

      ... we're, when we're talking about you guys-

    23. BW

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      ... we're not talking about crazy conspiracy theorists that are discussing hollow Earth. We're t- we're talking about some real stuff.

    25. PK

      I want to emphasize one thing that Bret said, which is (clears throat) the (coughs) sorry. I have COVID.

    26. JR

      Do you have COVID? Don't lie.

    27. PK

      No, I don't. I just have a little-

    28. JR

      Just kidding. We heard it's

    29. NA

      (laughs)

    30. PK

      A little catch in the throat. No, the, the um-

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    (laughs) . …

    1. PK

      is ... It's a really moving story because you had populations, villages in Africa where men, by the time you were 40, you were blind. And so you had like, these communities where the children would lead the elders around like, with a stick because they were all blind from this parasite.

    2. BW

      (laughs) .

    3. PK

      And so basically, this drug restored the sight and transformed the lives of millions of people around the world. And so I- I find that a really moving story, just its history in terms of parasites. And now, and then Brett brought up viruses. You know, that study that we already talked about in Australia, that study actually comes on 10 years of studies in the lab on other viruses. So, it's been shown to be effective against Zika, dengue, West Nile, HIV, even influenza. Again, all lab studies. Uh, we don't really have clinical trials in the other viruses. Um, but when this pandemic came, it wasn't really a crapshoot to try out ivermectin in an RNA virus. And so, um, it already-

    4. BW

      I didn't realize that.

    5. PK

      Yeah.

    6. BW

      I can say that.

    7. PK

      It already has 10, 10 years of, of-

    8. BW

      Learning this from you now.

    9. PK

      ... antiviral effects in the lab. So, in fact, I'm gonna foreshadow a little bit. It's my secret belief that as we go into the future, 10, 20 years, my hope and what I guess is that it actually will prove to be a really broad antiviral against other viruses. And so, I'm like, really optimistic about the future of this molecule on other viruses. We can talk about COVID (laughs) still 'cause, you know, the, the data that, that Brett brought up is, is, um ... It, it, in my mind it's profound. And I think Brett's being very cautious, which is correct. But as a guy who's been immersed in this data, who's been living with it, who's a physician who's been using it. I mean, I've been using it for eight months. I am part of a network of physicians around the world that I talk to re-, uh, you know, regularly, many of whom have treated in the hundreds to thousands of patients. Um, w- we know how effective it is. And so, um, you know, I, I have, I have pretty strong opinions on this data. But the points that Brett brings up is very true. It's ... You know, this, this obsession with this large randomized control trial is, um ... (sighs) it's fraught with error when you do that. It's not appropriate for a pandemic. And it's also a tool that's being used as a disinformation tactic. So, some of it is scientifically based. We all like big randomized control trials when you can get them, even though they, they're prone to error. Um, but what I try to remind the world is that when you look at the strength of medical evidence to prove something in medicine, you start at the bottom, which is an anecdote, right? So, let's say you got sick, Joe, and I gave you ivermectin and the next day you felt better, and I'd say, "I found the cure for COVID." That's not strong evidence, right? (laughs) Especially with a virus. People get better without it, right? So, you have anecdotes, case series, right? Then you have like observational trials where you just follow a group of patients or you look at a group that you treated versus who you didn't, maybe retrospectively. And it's called this pyramid of medical evidence. The top of that pyramid is not a large randomized control trial. It's actually what Brett said. It's a meta-analysis of randomized control trials. The reason why, because any individual trial can have an error or a flaw or a dosing or a timing problem, it might lead you to the wrong conclusion. But if you have a whole collection of trials and then you put them all together and you look for the signal out of that, it's much more robust 'cause it corrects for any individual flaws that you'll see in studies. And so when we talk about that there are meta-analyses of randomized control trials, 24 randomized control trials, thousands of patients, that's fairly unassailable evidence to show massive impact of this drug against COVID. Are there any credible critics of these conclusions? Are there any-

    10. BW

      (clears throat)

    11. PK

      ... uh, very interesting criticisms of the use of ivermectin?

    12. BW

      Uh, I want to, I want to-

    13. PK

      Please.

    14. BW

      ... say something. Y- there, there is room for skepticism on ivermectin. But it does not explain the behavior of the skeptics. Right? In other words, if we look at the standard of evidence that they appear to be applying here, I don't think it's defensible in the end, but reasonable people could potentially disagree. The problem is when you've got a drug that's this safe-... that does appear to work in many of the studies that have looked at it, and you're not giving it to patients who show up and, uh, test positive for COVID, even when you know that for viral disease- diseases treating them early is the key to helping them, that doesn't add up. Because if, you know, the Hippocratic Oath in this case would suggest that the safest thing to do is to give the drug, and if it doesn't work, you haven't harmed them. But if you fail to give it to them and it would've worked, you have. So I would just point out, the strange obsession with large randomized controlled trials is actually cryptically an attack on several things. If you're going to insist that that is the only kind of evidence you will accept before prescribing this drug, you're signing up for new expensive drugs over cheap repurposed ones. You're signing up for unknown risks over known ones. We know 40 years of history on this ivermectin for example. You're signing up for shareholders over patients, 'cause these large-scale trials are very expensive and the drug companies have to pay for them. So you're basically saying any drug that's out of patent, and therefore nobody is going to, uh, you know, lobby for it, isn't going to be able to find the money to do the trials. And you're signing up for effectively phase three information over phase four. Now phase four is an informal designation for the phase after a drug comes to market, right? The point is you don't really know how dangerous something is until you've seen it in a large population that has lots of variation in it and has enough time for problems to develop, right? That's phase four. But what we've done is we've effectively suspended a lot of the rules of evidence for things like vaccines that were brought to, uh, market under emergency use authorizations, and then we're setting a stupidly high standard for things that are very safe and appear to work. And I would just say by analogy, what's the best kind of evidence for a crime? Right? I would say video evidence of people committing the crime, right? Video evidence in which you get a clear sense of who the person who's committing the crime is. Okay? Let's all agree that that's the best evidence. What if we said that's the only evidence we're going to accept because we have really high evidentiary standards, right? There's no crime if it didn't get recorded on video where you can see the person's face.

    15. PK

      Right. Good analogy.

    16. BW

      Okay? Well then the point is, all right, now effectively lots of stuff that we would like to make illegal isn't illegal because all you got to do is make sure there's no camera around and you can do it. That's what they're effectively doing here, right? By insisting on that standard and ignoring all of the very high quality evidence that has come in some other form, they are effectively setting a bar so high that it can't be met. And why they're doing it, we can speculate about, but the fact that it makes no logical sense is transparent.

    17. PK

      Well, let's speculate.

    18. BW

      All right.

    19. PK

      'Cause this is part of some of the things that I was discussing earlier when I said things that are coming to light. New information that we know over the last few weeks.

    20. BW

      So, uh, Jamie, could you bring up that New York Times article?

    21. PK

      Can I, uh, emphasize the point? I like what Brett's saying about-

    22. BW

      Keep this...

    23. PK

      I'm sorry.

    24. BW

      It's all right.

    25. PK

      I keep... I'm a rookie here, uh, Josh. That's all right. No worries, man.

    26. BW

      It's all right, man.

    27. PK

      You guys are like veterans, man.

    28. BW

      But this thing moves.

    29. PK

      Okay, so.

    30. BW

      Just pull it, just grab that handle and you just drag it towards you.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

    Correct. …

    1. BW

      scheme within the data science that is used to do these meta-analyses. And low certainty means that there is an expectation that if you had more information, the number would move a little bit. It doesn't mean that it's uncertain whether the effect is there.

    2. JR

      Correct.

    3. BW

      It means that-

    4. JR

      Correct.

    5. BW

      ... that the, identifying the exact number is liable to be sensitive to more information. But nonetheless, again, this is the issue of ivermectin A is prophylaxis. Ivermectin B is treatment. The evidence that it is highly effective as treatment is, I would argue, overwhelming. You can see it in this meta-analysis. The signal is very clear, and my experience has been when you look at the papers in which it's disappointing, you very frequently see a reason, right? In general, they treat late. We know that that is an obstacle to it working. Um, the last paper I went to gave it on an empty stomach. This is one of these things where, you tell me if I'm wrong, Pierre, but uh, if you're treating parasites, you may want to keep the drug in your gut, and therefore you don't want it to dissolve and cross into your blood. If you're treating or preventing COVID, you do want it to cross into your blood, and the fact is the molecule is fat-soluble. So if you're taking it as prophylaxis, you should take it with fat, but they don't like to do stuff like that in these trials because empty stomach is the way to get all of the patients to be the same. If they've eaten something, they will have, will have eaten different things-

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. BW

      ... and it creates noise. So anyway, there's a, there's a bias there in some studies in which they block the effect in part by not letting it cross into the bloodstream.

    8. PK

      Yeah. Two, two more points on this abstract. Um, so the two most important words, right? So, so Brett emphasized this finding of...... 86% protection against infection, uh, if you take it preventatively, right? And that low certainty evidence means it could be higher than 86% (laughs) protection, it could be lower. Um, I maintain, and I want to really emphasize this, is that if you look at the trials that make up those preventative trials, right, the ones where you take it weekly, 'cause they had some which you took weekly, some where you actually just took it once a month, and these, they, uh, they actually had profound, uh, uh, benefits. But the ones that you took weekly led to, like, near perfect protection, like 100% protection in a large, uh, population of healthcare workers. Now, in that trial, they also took it with, um, like a seaweed called carrageenan, and it's more common in South America. It's, it's considered to be virucidal, it's been shown to be virucidal. And so, they sprayed that and their-

    9. JR

      Virucidal?

    10. PK

      Virucidal meaning, uh, can kill, uh, like homicidal, but virucidal meaning kills viruses.

    11. JR

      Okay.

    12. PK

      Right? So, uh, a virus murderer, right? (laughs) So, um, uh, and so, they, they kind of used two, and actually, trials of that seaweed spray are actually also positive. So, so the best trials of prevention really had two molecules that were probably working in concert, but it led to near, to perfect prete- uh, prevention. And in, in, in 1,200 healthcare workers, 800 who took this, uh, regimen, uh, 400 who didn't, not one of, uh, it was 788 healthcare workers got COVID over, like, a four-month period.

    13. JR

      Well, wait, but that-

    14. PK

      Not one of them got COVID.

    15. BW

      Not one of them, but that's, that's not the thing that's most impressive here because these were frontline workers-

    16. JR

      Yes.

    17. BW

      ... who were so thoroughly exposed to COVID that 57% of the people in the 400-person control group who didn't take ivermectin did get COVID, right? That's a huge distinction. So yes, I agree-

    18. JR

      This-

    19. BW

      ... that to the extent that this evidence is low certainty, it suggests strongly that a proper protocol with this, a protocol in which we've dialed in the steps of it, is liable to be much closer to 100% effective. But I want to emphasize, it doesn't matter. That number is plenty high-

    20. JR

      Yes.

    21. BW

      ... to drive COVID to extinction, and I would also say, and this is my wheelhouse, evolution. We are dealing with a limited time. The more time this virus has to experiment with humans, the more likely we get stuck with it forever. So, our failure to apply ivermectin, and frankly, it isn't just ivermectin, we now have a series of repurposed drugs for which there is not a large profit to be made because they're out of patent, but have shown high effectiveness in the treatment of c- of COVID. Our failure to use these things properly in a coordinated way that is actually evidence-based is putting humanity in danger of getting stuck with this pandemic forever.

    22. PK

      Absolutely. I mean, I, the key thing that I want to communicate is that this is a treatable disease. We do have an outpatient treatment for it. It's not just ivermectin. Brett mentioned a number of other molecules, uh, that are effective. Ivermectin has the most data behind it, and it also has the longest experience, especially when you're talking about population-wide distribution. So, you can't think of a better drug that already has a track record at eradicating a scourge of disease across continents, right?

    23. JR

      Hm, the best thing it has going for it is that Trump never brought it up. (laughs)

    24. BW

      (laughs) There is that.

    25. JR

      Right?

    26. PK

      There is that. That would've-

    27. JR

      So there's not a resistance on the left.

    28. PK

      Right, right. There shouldn't be.

    29. BW

      The only resistance... Right, the only resistance is the resistance because of the authorities.

    30. PK

      Yep.

  6. 1:15:00 – 1:24:39

    I believe they do.…

    1. BW

      the evidence that is right in front of us, that we have multiple drugs that are highly effective for COVID. And one, that I would point out again, is highly effective as a prophylactic. So, I don't know anything about the business side of this. I do know what fiduciary responsibility is. I know that the shareholder value must be driving things behind the scenes. I know that these companies have been immunized from liability with respect to harms that might be done by the vaccines that they're distributing. So, there's a question about do all of those things add up to explain the many anomalies about the recommendations of how to treat patients, uh, who have COVID? And-

    2. PK

      I believe they do. (laughs)

    3. BW

      Well, let's put it this way. I can't come up with anything else that makes any sense.

    4. PK

      Well, it's a perfect storm, right? You have a generic ... Like, what-

    5. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    6. PK

      ... what is the, uh, expense of ivermectin?

    7. BW

      Oh, it's, uh, actually, I've, I've seen it estimated like in large, bulk quantities you could make it for less than a dollar, like a dose. Um, in, in the United States, there's FDA regulated, uh, product, which so it's more expensive. But, um, around the world, I mean, in India they were distributing it in many regions. And we should talk about India in a second. But, um, it- it's extremely cheap. It's a very low-cost drug.

    8. PK

      That's a problem.

    9. BW

      Oh, big problem.

    10. PK

      So extremely effective, extremely cheap, and generic. Big problem.

    11. BW

      Yeah, but look-

    12. PK

      But is it?

    13. BW

      How ... I don't-

    14. PK

      How is the problem?

    15. BW

      What, what I can't get myself to is, what do these conversations sound like on the other side?

    16. PK

      Right.

    17. BW

      Who decides to shut down, in the middle of a pandemic, where you have a drug that's actually good enough to end the pandemic at any point you wanted, right? Who decides to prioritize business interests ahead of that? I find it hard to imagine. So, I- I'm, what I'm, what I'm actually guessing is going on is this. You've got a pharmaceutical industry which frequently has obstacles. The- the development of a new drug is extremely expensive. It can be, you know, it can go bust. You can develop a new drug and it doesn't get through the trials, so there's a lot of risk. And so, the pharmaceutical industry has engineered mechanisms to get their drugs through this process, right? They've corrupted the system. And my sense is that their ability to force the system to accept certain things and to ignore other things is so well-developed at this point, that it must have just gotten applied on autopilot. And somehow, we're stuck in this situation where the evidence that we have effective tools is overwhelming. Those tools do not excite anybody in the pharmaceutical industry, because there's no profit to be made. And somehow that autopilot has us facing the possibility of getting stuck with this- this pathogen permanently, because there's nobody at the helm. That's about what I would guess.

    18. PK

      Yeah. I mean, this is, you're seeing, you're seeing (laughs) ... This is a system at work, right? So, we- we- we live in a public, in a health system which favors for-profit medicines over non-profits. The for-profit medicines that can cre- can, that can, uh, hurdle over those bars, right, to get those big pharma trials, no one's gonna fund that around ivermectin. Um, actually philanthropy is funding a- a relatively big trial right now. We're waiting on ... I think the world is waiting on the results. I actually think that trial is unethical. Um, I- I could not as a physician, knowing what I know, give someone a placebo right now, um, for ivermectin. The evidence is too overwhelming. Um, but you're in a system where- where clearly the- the things that are favored are those with financial interests. And so, that's who gets the ear of the agencies. That's who gets attention by the FDA. And ivermectin is really ignored. There's, there's no one championing ivermectin except for like my little group of, uh, uh, non-profit doctors who became expert at ivermectin. And I will also say though, we're not alone. There's like, you know, our organization, we call ourselves the FLCCC, uh, for short. But there's little FLCCCs in countries all around the world that we're talking to who are also advocating and going to their governments and their agencies and finding very similar resistances. It's like, it's like the same play over and over again. Well, the influence of the pharmaceutical companies is a real thing.

    19. BW

      It-

    20. PK

      It's global.

    21. BW

      It is.

    22. PK

      Yeah.

    23. BW

      But I think wh- what, what keeps stopping me in my tracks is the magnitude ... If you just simply extrapolate from what is evident in that meta-analysis about the capacity of ivermectin to address this, the amount of needless human suffering-

    24. PK

      Mm-hmm.

    25. BW

      ... is almost i- incalculable.

    26. PK

      Incalculable.

    27. BW

      It's incalculable. And th- that we would allow it to continue ... I mean, Fauci was very excited in his press conference about this new initiative, and it sort of sounded like, "Well, we're settling in for a very long-term, uh, situation with this pathogen." Right? We were told that the vaccines were a solution to this, but it looks like they're just really gearing up for, you know, this. And of course, that will create profits for a long time to come.

    28. PK

      Bret, can we say, just stop for a second, and call attention to the absurdity of what that article just described? You're talking about they're committing $3.2 billion-... to develop a better ivermectin. We already have ivermectin. It is already a profoundly effective antiviral. It is cheap, widely available, could be produced in mass quantities and delivered to the masses and population. Yet our government, in the middle of a pandemic, is giving $3.2 billion to the pharmaceutical industry in a program to develop a new oral antiviral pill.

    29. JR

      It's almost, it's so transparent. You wish he'd just say, "Look, okay, I see what you're doing. Will you do me a favor? Just adjust one of the molecules on, on ivermectin."

    30. NA

      Right, we'll pay for it.

Episode duration: 2:54:50

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