Pierre Kory: I distill the lessons that could lead society and health care to a better place next year.
In 2021, my life was transformed in ways I never thought possible, the least of which was having to leave an ICU job for the third time in the pandemic, effectively ending my career as a practicing ICU specialist and teacher (hopefully just for the time being). Despite all that I lost, what I gained in wisdom and purpose (and friendships) will serve me for the rest of my life. Below is the letter I wrote for the FLCCC substack. Enjoy.
After a year like the one we’ve just had, it’s important to take a moment to reflect and distill lessons that may help us change course towards a happier destiny than where we ended up in 2021. There’s a lot I could say about what has been happening, given the state of our country and our medical community, but I will focus on what I see as the four major takeaways to guide us forward:
1. Do no harm does not mean do nothing
Many health care professionals in the U.S. immediately adopted an approach of not trying any treatments until large, expensive and prolonged randomized trials could be performed, so they could have the security of knowing their treatments were recommended by powerful health agencies.
Some of us, meanwhile, got down to the business of medicine, studying the mechanisms of this novel disease and then formulating treatment approaches using readily available medicines with known properties that could counteract these mechanisms. We did everything possible to give patients the best chance of coming out of this disease alive and free from harm. I’m proud to be in this camp because the results speak for themselves.
The ‘maverick’ doctors in the U.S. who took the above-mentioned path experienced both resistance and punishment from our administrative leaders and government managers, while other countries and regions around the world adopted similar approaches with outstanding results.
I frequently cite the example of Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s largest states with a population two-thirds the size of the U.S. With a careful door-to-door surveillance strategy in combination with a prevention and early treatment regime using ivermectin, Uttar Pradesh effectively eliminated COVID-19 from their state of 241 million people. The history books will (I hope) rightly recognize their efforts as one of the most successful public health interventions ever. more here
That Grouchy guy who lives in a trashcan will utterly explode when he reads this.
Where is Groucho? He should be contributing some of his wisdom on this.
He’s out picking up his new toaster from Pfizer.
They give you a coupon for it when you get the 7th booster.
^
I thought they gave you a coffin.