Transcript of the talk between Dr Cremola and Dr Pierre Cory
[Part 1 of 3]
ED
A Review of the Outpatient Treatment Methods for COVID-
19:
A Special Interview With Dr. Pierre Kory
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Dr. Mercola:
Welcome, everyone is Dr. Mercola, helping you take control of your health and today we have a
real treat for you is we’re talking to one of the leaders in the movement for addressing the
implementation of actually treating the COVID infection as an alternative to using the COVID
jab as a method of preventing it, which clearly it’s failed miserably. And so this is Dr. Pierre
Kory, he is a critical care physician. He’s triple-board certified internal medicine, critical care
and pulmonology, pulmonary medicine. And he just told me before we started recording that he
lost his job because of his position. So we’re going to hear the details of that and in engage in
some really interesting dialogue, you’ll definitely want to keep tuned. So welcome. And thank
you for joining us.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
All right. Thanks. Good to be here, Joe.
Dr. Mercola
So why don’t you give us a little background of you know, your history? And what and what led
to your recent termination? In your position?
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Yeah, I mean, you want me to have about the history and the pandemic or my career real quick?
Yeah, do
Dr. Mercola:
Career. Tell me briefly, you know, just so people know what your background is for those who
may not be aware of you? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Sure. Anyway, basically, um, so I was a math major in college. I was fairly immature. When I
graduated from college, like a lot of young men didn’t know what I want to do. I was actually in
the restaurant business for most of my 20s. I went to medicine late 29.
Dr. Mercola:
That is late.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
That is, yeah, you know, while I was in restaurant business, I got a degree in like health policy.
And so I was studying health, I always wanted to be a doctor, I just was not mature enough. And
so anyway, went to medicine late.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
And became obviously – I went into internal medicine. And, you know, when I was in internal
medicine, I just thought the best doctors in the hospital were the pulmonary critical care, guys,
they just seem to be able to handle everything from the minor to the most severe and I just, I
don’t know, I just really respected those. I wanted to be like them. And so I became a long an
ICU specialist. And most of my career was in Manhattan, actually, at Beth Israel Medical Center
where I was, I helped run the ICU, I had a really busy outpatient and endoscopy like
bronchoscopy practice. And then I was recruited to the University of Wisconsin about five or six
years ago, where I was the chief of the critical care service. And I’ll just finish, you know, when
COVID hit, I was in a leadership position. And I very quickly saw that — I basically, I resigned,
because the way they were handling the pandemic, I felt sort of morally and ethically obligated, I
refuse to be in a position of leadership, Joe, when they were insisting on supportive care only. So
you know, I was on the phone every day with all my friends, colleagues and ICUs. In New York,
they were like getting buried, running out of ventilators. ICUs were overflowing everybody, that
the mortality rates, I don’t think people remember the mortality rates in that first surge in New
York, were just absolutely off the charts. And literally, the leaders in my specialty, were saying
oxygen, fluids and Tylenol.
Dr. Mercola:
Let me just interrupt your description for a bit. I’m just wondering, curious as to your thought
and why the mortality rate was so high early on with this retrospective scope that we have now?
Is it likely because they refused to give any treatment before, they basically told anyone with the
illness, “Go home and come back when you’re ready to die.”
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Well, not well. So certainly, the lack of early treatment would be part of it. I’m talking about
hospital mortality, because certainly – nobody really and even me, I gotta tell you at that time,
the way I was trained, Joe, I mean, I came out of the establishment. I mean, I was definitely
always a free thinker, and I had trouble in, in the ivory tower. But you know, I never really
thought there was an effective antiviral, you know, aside from you know, Valacyclovir, surely
not remdesivir. But like, I didn’t think it was anything specific for the early phase. The virus,
however, as an ICU physician, as a doctor was an expert in lung injury, and in severe lung injury
and acute respiratory failure that landed on a ventilator. I knew there was a bunch of stuff that we
could use and the fact that we were using nothing. Even anticoagulation, we could see that they
were clotting to the degree that I had never really seen before. That first phase of COVID the
clotting was through the roof. I will tell you, my opinion is the disease’s change. I don’t see the
degree of clotting, like I did in that first phase. There’s something that happens in the disease.
But they were literally telling us that we needed randomized controlled trials to do anything.
People were dying. No, I mean, you get you got how broken medicine is. But so the issue was,
all of my ideas were getting shouted down. And I was kind of almost, well, it was almost visible
that like, the clinical meetings that I was holding with all the hospitalists and all the intensivists.
My superiors were showing up and kind of now like getting me to stand down. Because I was
entertaining the idea that we should do this, this the other thing, and they didn’t want anything to
be done. And so I said, “I’m done.” You know, I’m leaving, and New York was begging for
people to come back because they were getting crushed.
Dr. Mercola 5:37
And so how long was ago was this when you left Wisconsin?
Dr. Pierre Kory:
We got our first patients, I would say mid-March 2020. I resigned by mid-April, early April, and
then and then. And then I went to New York for five weeks, and I ran my old ICU in New York.
And so I resigned from my first job then and so I already had a difference of opinion on how to
approach this disease. And I don’t know if you know this, but I gave testimony in the Senate in
May of 2020.
Dr. Mercola:
That was in, where it was, at the U.S. Senator Wisconsin?
Dr. Pierre Kory 6:14
The U.S. Senate. So it was in a homeland security meeting. And I gave testimony saying that it
was critical that the world use corticosteroids in the treatment of the hospital phase of this
disease. And I got killed, University of Wisconsin, because I was still kind of employed by them.
Like my actual resignation date hadn’t happened. They were livid that I was speaking in public
giving my opinion, which, if you know anything about academics, like I had an appointment as
Yeah, well, you know, and it makes sense. It’s largely reflection, not so much of their belief in it,
but the number of clinicians on their staff who are using it. I mean, it has an expiration date. So if
no one’s going to prescribe it, why buy it and have it available? No one’s going to, you know, use
it.
Dr. Pierre Kory 42:01
But one other thing, though, so there’s also a trial. So I talk mostly about this disease model of
septic shock. The disease model of ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), had a really
interesting trial about three or four years ago, called the CITRIS-ALI, acute lung injury trial. And
they actually showed a profound mortality benefit. And in that trial, they use 50 milligrams per
kilogram IV Q=6, which is around a little bit over two, you know, for a regular 70-kilogram
male, you know, it’d be it’d be about 3.5. Right? So what was it or 2.5 milligrams, 2.5 grams IV
Q=6, so there, it’s about 10 grams a day. And they showed a large mortality benefit. And, and so
if you look at our doses, although we use 1.5, just because that was our standard dose, the
CITRIS-ALI uses 50 milligrams per kilogram, which is 2.5. And then there’s a number of case
reports in advanced lung injury, what we call mega-dosing, so 25 grams twice a day has, you
know, there’s a number of case reports where they saw profound responses in the, response to
lung injury of these high doses. So we I don’t think that we do it perfectly on our protocol, but
we do it pragmatically, which is, I got to tell you, the one thing that most hospitals won’t do, they
won’t let you give 25 grams twice a day.
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, well, just hospitals will not administer it.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
No, because there’s no precedent for it. They don’t know anything about it. You can’t say, “oh,
there’s a case report where it worked really well.” I mean, medicines broken that way they don’t –
even something as safe as IV vitamin C, they’ll think that you’re crazy if you want to give
someone 25 grams.
Dr. Mercola:
Unless, you know you’re you’ve somehow established your protocol and worked them up and
you have a relationship with them. But as a tangent to that. And a reflection of my being a Boy
Scout early on, never made Eagle but it got close. Would it make sense for people watching this
who are concerned about someone in their family or community that’s going to get sick and go to
the hospital, and it’s a local community hospital, so they won’t have the IV vitamin C, or maybe
they can call them and see if it’s there. But if it’s most likely not, just to ask their doctor to order
that for them. It’s a vial, it’s not very expensive, they could keep it in there and then bring it to the
hospital. And then they can at least administer it.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
So I have been involved with a number of cases where hospitals, pharmacists formularies in the
hospital have been asked to get because remember, you can get any medicine in this country
generally within 24 hours. I mean, you can-
Dr. Mercola:
But it might be too late at 24 hours.
.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
No, no, 24 hours is long, but for a hospital, you can borrow from a neighboring hospital, you can
get it shipped. I mean, there’s ways to get these medicines. It’s not the how to get the medicine,
it’s whether they would give it. So they would have to be under the care physician was willing to
prescribe it. And if a physician has no experience with it, but you know, they don’t do it, they
don’t do it, I’m telling you, they don’t do it.
Dr. Mercola:
That’s got to be so frustrating God, you know, you have something that’s going to be essentially
lifesaving, and they refuse to administer. And with virtually no side effects, no side effects,
Dr. Pierre Kory:
You should see the resistance I got when I was like, at one point, I was the director of the main
ICU at University of Wisconsin. And the data for me was so overwhelming, the early data, and I
just said, “Hey, guys, can’t we just start a protocol where we just give everybody on admission
IV vitamin C, like, what’s the downside?” Everyone starts talking about kidney stones and all of
this nonsense, and we had so much data to show that doesn’t happen in acute illness, or in IV
formulations. But it’s, it’s bizarre. It’s bizarre, like when you propose a new way of treating
someone to a doctor, this is what I’ve found. Every time I have what I would call a “bright idea.”
I’m faced with a doctor who is by definition smarter than I am, who knows more than I am. So
when I have a new idea, obviously, my idea has to be wrong, Joe, right. Now, because if it was
right, they would have thought of it first. And literally, I feel like I live in a cartoon in medicine,
because every time I discuss with someone, they just don’t believe anything works. Because if it
worked, they would be doing it. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s, I think, a testimony to the arrogance of many physicians, you know, they’re well-intentioned,
but they just are reluctant to accept that there’s other people who have insights that might be
helpful to them. And they’ve long since lost their journey of being a perpetual student.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
It’s 10% that I find that aren’t that way. Like, you can approach a doctor, you start having a
conversation like this, and they’re like, “Huh, that’s interesting,” or “I’m intrigued” or seems
reasonable, right? Those kinds of responses, unfortunately, it’s a very small minority. And so it’s
like you said, it’s, it’s this ingrained arrogance that physicians either are trained with, or it comes
with the territory, but it’s very damaging. I think it holds medicine back and it hurts patients.
Dr. Mercola:
Or kills people. That’s killing people. Literally. That is not hyperbole. So on a really important
topic, I mean, you’ve put together an outpatient protocol. And obviously, you’ve sifted through a
lot of the evidence. And I know, I just want you to share what that is. And I believe you’re going
to be sharing that you’re not claiming this is the ultimate – this is the gold standard. This is what
you’ve accumulated together based on the data and there may there likely is some better
interventions that could be added to this, but this is a start. Would that be fair?
Dr. Pierre Kory:
No question. So first thing, I would appreciate that the way you brought up that question, Joe, is
that, because you’re helping me remind myself. So our protocol, number one, is always an
evolution. We’re not saying like, “This is the only way to treat it. This is how we decided to treat
it. This is how it will always be treated.” We reserve the right to deprioritize, change the dose,
substitute a new medicine, you know, we want to follow the data and the experience and the
knowledge of this disease. That’s number one. Number two, all of our protocols are combination
therapy protocols. And by the way that gives doctors fits. You know why? Because they want to
know, well, “How do you know that this is necessary? How do you know this and like, we know
that there’s trials of each individual component showing that they’re effective, we believe that
they’re synergistic. We’re never going to do a trial which tests every component on our protocols
with just practicing medicine and giving what we think is pragmatic, sound advice. So that
would be one statement. The second is, there’s a number of protocols, right? So the AAPS
(Association of American Physicians and Surgeons) has a protocol. You know, Tess Lawrie’s
World Council for Health, they have a number of options. And so there’s a lot of doctors who
might emphasize or de-emphasize that, you know, a medicine on our protocol. And so, we do not
pretend that this is the only way you know, skinning the cat. But we do put a lot of thought into
it. And most and you’ll also notice, another thing is that most of our medicines are repurposed,
right? So they’re not novel. They’re very well-known over decades, safety profiles are well
known, they tend to be generally low-cost and their mechanisms are well-known. And so I would
say, a central medicine to all of our protocols, prevention, early treatment, hospital and late phase
like long haul is ivermectin for many reasons, right. So we find that ivermectin is a potent anti-
viral. That’s been demonstrated for 10 years now in the lab and numbers of RNA viruses, they’ve
shown that it interrupts replication of like Zika, dengue, West Nile, even HIV it shown some
efficacy in the lab. And then the clinical studies are just overwhelming. Can I just take one
minute to say that if anyone wants to call ivermectin a controversial medicine, I just want to call
out it is absolutely not controversial. It is a medicine that is buried in corruption, and the
corruption is in the suppressing of its efficacy. There are unfortunately – this is what I had to
learn in medicine is that there are immense powers that do not want the efficacy of that drug to
be known. Because if it is known and becomes standard of care, it will obliterate the market for
any number of novel pharmaceutical products. And so it’s-
Dr. Mercola:
It would eliminate vaccines that the justification for emergency authorization would fail to exist.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
So when you look at the actions taken against ivermectin, it can only be understood that it’s
threatening something big and powerful, because boy, has it been attacked, and it’s been
attacked. When it sits on like literally 64 controlled trials, almost every single one of them
showing benefit, many of them large benefits, and yet, the other side distorts it to make it seem
like it’s controversial and it’s absurd. And so, we know it works. We know it from in vitro, in
vivo animal studies, case series, one of the first case series in June of 2020. That came out in
Dominican Republic, 3,300 consecutive patients coming into the emergency room, they treated
ivermectin, 16 were hospitalized, one death, 3,300 patients. I mean, a profound result of acutely
ill COVID patients in the Dominican Republic. And those experiences have continued now, one
caveat is that we were playing catch up a little bit because ivermectin has a dose-response
relationship. And remember, Delta had 250 times the viral loads of Alpha. So we started seeing
breakthroughs on our prevention protocols. I’m one of them. I got COVID. While I was taking it
weekly, now we’re doing it twice weekly. Is it the right dose? We’re not sure-
Dr. Mercola:
Because there a number of videos that tried to disparage you as a result, they’ve tried to widely
circulated discredit you.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
I found that you know that people took a lot of glee in that, like, you know, you know, doctor
who recommends ivermectin gets COVID while on ivermectin. And I got to tell you, maybe I’m
just naive and too much of a physician, but I also found it curious that I got COVID because
nobody had for many, many, many months. And we had, I knew many hundreds of people
around the world who were taking a prophylactic, but when delta hit, that’s exactly when we
started to see breakthrough. So like, I knew it was Delta, I didn’t think it was a failure of
ivermectin. And so we’re seeing much less breakthroughs now on a higher dose. Is it the right
dose? I don’t know. Could it be higher? Maybe. But we know it works as prevention.
Dr. Mercola:
Did you change the entire dosing regimen based on the introduction or experience with Delta?
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Yes, because of the breakthroughs, we just empirically chose twice a week instead of once a
week.
Dr. Mercola:
And there is no test for Delta. I mean, it’s just a SARS-CoV-2 test right that the actual genetic
identification, but it does in like research lab.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
So 100%, there’s no test for Delta. But when I say Delta, it’s when in the places where they did
do the genotype sequencing. Once the centers that were doing that were finding let like 60%,
70%, 80% of the samples were Delta, the rest of us assumed it was Delta because everywhere
they were sequencing, they were finding that the vast majority were Delta. And so again, it’s only
specialized centers that were doing that. So that’s where we look to, to find out what variant
we’re dealing with. Right, like so for instance, right now, if I take care of five COVIDs next
week, will I know if they have Omicron or not? I have no idea until some center tells me that
80% of what we’re seeing in the community is Omicron I won’t know. Right? But with Delta was
pretty clear. Most centers, most countries that were doing genotype sequencing, it was all Delta,
you know, the Delta was just such a high. You know, so that’s how we knew-
Dr. Mercola:
How many of these centers that do the genotype sequencing are there in the country? Is it
dozens, is this-
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Zero idea. I know that in South Africa right now, from the reports that I read, it was a consortium
of seven universities that were doing the sequencing, I-
Dr. Mercola:
Mostly research centers. It was mostly research.
Dr. Pierre Kory:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, you need specialized equipment and facilities and
expertise. So-
Dr. Mercola:
I interrupted you. So the ivermectin for sure higher dose now since Delta is out,
Dr. Pierre Kory:
So we, you know, and we use higher doses for treatment, you know, because it has a dose
response, the viral loads are higher, so we know we need higher, and the higher doses are
effective. And that’s another thing, right? With the trials, some of the trials are playing catch up.
They literally use like low doses in better variants. They’re using, like old doses in new variants.
And anyway, so ivermectin for it’s in early antiviral properties. We also use it later on, because it
also has a whole host of anti-inflammatory properties. And so it actually is effective in multiple
phases. Besides ivermectin, we also has that as an as an option, a drug called nitazoxanide. Now,
here’s the trick about nitazoxanide.
Dr. Mercola:
The tricky is saying it.
.