Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. #184 Part 1 - Dr. Andrew Liebenberg

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Originally from South Africa this local doctor is speaking up about preventative medicines & their suppression in regards to COVID-19 as an early treatment. Andrew has been a doctor for 15+ years with a wealth of experience. Part 2 will be out Wednesday. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

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rental properties to help meet your needs. Whether you're looking for a small office or a 6,000 square foot commercial space, give Wade Gartner a call 780808, 5025. And if you're heading into any of these businesses, let them know you heard about them from the podcast, right? Let's get on to that T-Barr-1 tale of the tape. I'm originally from South Africa. He's been a medical doctor for 15 plus years, a family man and concerned citizen. I'm talking about Andrew Liebenberg.

So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr. Andrew Liebenberg. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, my pleasure, Sean. Good to meet you. Now, I want to hear, I'm so excited to have you on.

I've been trying, like I said, to get anyone from the medical background and just come in and tease my curiosity, right? Because we're all going through this and have somebody in the field come and freely be open to talk about questions and just kind of see where my brain goes because there's a lot of concern out there.

And for somebody to come in, and I keep pointing it out to you before we start, I mean, you're not an old guy. You've got young kids. As we both know, there's a lot at stake of you coming in and maybe putting yourself in harm's way to talk about these things. So first off, I want to tip my cap to you if we're coming in, and we'll get into that. But I just want to say it, I'll probably say it a bunch of times today.

I really appreciate you coming in this room and doing this with me. Now, what on earth were you doing today? We get started late. You're out on the north Saskatchew, and you want to give our listeners a little taste of what on earth you're up to these days? Yeah, so me and a few friends from Vermillion took our kids paddling on the north of Scotchon. Today we jumped in at the Elk Point Bridge

and headed downstream east. And what a beautiful afternoon. But my friend who planned it, I just looked at the distance and I thought I'd make it here on time. I didn't realize we were having a late afternoon stop and picnic on an island. And then we were paddling back against the current, back to where the second car was.

And then, you know, what a mission it is with the two cars and plus 10 kids. But it was a lot of fun. Yeah, my apologies for being late. I'm not worried about it. I was saying to you before, I got the three young kids at home sleeping. It's quiet in here. I had a coffee. I feel great.

I got 10 kids on the North Saskatchewan. Is that, like, you were? I mean, it was a beautiful day. The water's high. They're a couple of gentle rapids, so it's fun for them. I was on a stand-a-paddleboard, which is this nice full-body exercise. I grew up next to the ocean, so I grew up surfing, so I enjoy that. Well, maybe you could give a little bit of your background to the listeners

to kind of give them a feel of, you know, that's a nice local flavor being on the North Saskatchewan. Yeah. But maybe a little bit of your background just to let them know who we're talking to here. Right, so I'm South African. I grew up in a small town near Cape Town, Southern Top of Africa. We moved here 2016. I've been, I graduated from med school in 2002. Also have a degree in medical science in pharmacology and physiology.

I've spent six months in a lab doing drug trials, early drug trials and animals, which was a fascinating year. So I've spent extra time in the stats and studies all of that. And then I also have a four-year master of medicine degree in family medicine. And in South Africa, it was focused on rural medicine. So we kind of trained in everything. So I'm a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades. So in a rural hospital where you don't have access to specialist care,

you can do a bit of everything. You can do emergency surgery, take out a pendent. is that sort of thing, obstetrics, cesarean sections. I've done a six-month stint in ICU, so I have a good grounding or comprehension of that. I've worked in a neonatal ICU. Yeah, I've pretty much done rotations and everything. Also, of note, is I worked in 2004

in the epicenter of the HIV-AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, and at that point, we had about a 40% positivity rate in the community. I was running as a junior doctor, internal medicine ward of 50 beds, female patients, and most of my patients with HIV AIDS were young mothers. And because that community, the husbands would work in the minds. So they would come back, bring HIV home, infect their wives. And we had a lot of young children who got it through pregnancy and breastfeeding. And the tragedy is in 2004, we did not have access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy.

And antiretrovirals had been out for over 15 years, which is really, it's something to stand back and reflect on. So if you were in a first world country, you had full access to antiretrovirals. Our government just simply couldn't afford to roll it out. So they kind of had a blanket ban on it. And doctors who were standing up trying to get access to AIV. for their patients were actually losing their jobs, which thinking back now, it's an injustice of huge proportions. You know, I think the first retroviral AZT was on the market in 1987.

So, yeah, and I think that's why I'm quite passionate about early treatment of COVID and repurposed cheap drugs that we know a lot about. They've been out there for a long time. They have very well-known safety profiles. They cost nothing because they're off-patent. And so I'm a huge advocate of getting access to those drugs. And, yeah, I'm sure we'll chat about Ivermactin later. I do want to say at the start that I take the ethics of medicine incredibly seriously,

the ethical foundations, my oath, and also the CanMed's roles, our roles and responsibilities given by the College of, the Canadian, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, I take that very seriously. As a family physician, I am a real advocate of patient-centered care, and we'll get into that, but I do want to say that I speak for, I'm not my views are not

the views of Alberta Health Services or Vermillion Hospital yeah this is just a chat between us and I know it's kind of choppy water I went down some rapids today on my stand-up paddle board managed to stay afloat so I'm hopefully going to

do the same tonight well I always say you know, you hear the things going on in the states or over in Europe or wherever, and I always go, well, it hasn't happened here in Canada yet, or it hasn't happened in Saskatchewan yet, right? And I'm talking about all the things through the pandemic, talking about Ocean Wiseblatt, a young kid getting arrested in Calgary for skating on an ultra pond and things like that.

There was a lady arrested in Lloyd for not wearing a mask in the, indoor pool. And now, once again, I don't know the full stories that go on. But when they start hitting close to home like that, guys really, you know, really got to take measure of what's going on out there. And so for you to poke your head up and walk in this room, I fully understand, you know, what's at stake here for you. So I do appreciate you coming in.

Now, I got to ask, going back to South Africa, You said doctors were losing their jobs for standing up for trying to get the right treatments into South Africa? Well, they were, yeah, there was just huge pushback from the health care system and with threat to their jobs. You know, people who were medical directors of hospitals and that were losing their jobs. I was young out of my depth. the day I started on my internal medicine rotation there, the internist resigned and they didn't have a stand-in. So I managed that ward on my own. I was kind of a little before Google, so I carried my backpack full of textbooks. And yeah, it was a humbling year for sure.

But yeah, doctors that were standing up just trying to get treatment for their patients were we're losing their income really. I'm curious what you thought about that back then. And now, like, looking back on it, what you think now? Yeah, I think, I mean, they were just a few incredibly brave and isolated people, especially in my neck of the woods where I was working in Quisilu Natal. One thing, I think, because we didn't have the internet, internet there wasn't the opportunity to network when we were in remote locations pretty isolated

and i mean i just wouldn't have known what to do to you know how do you advocate for it you wouldn't have known you're tuned yeah i mean we we had those old Nokia with a black you know yeah absolutely original Nokia phones and i mean so i so i think that's one thing that that's happened now is with with the internet and um there's a real networking and collaboration how happening. Yeah. So understanding you've seen what a government can do to predecessors of yours and you've seen now what they're doing not only in our country but in other countries but in other places. Like I just for those who don't know who Dr. Byram Bridal is you should just listen to him talk you

talk to government and listen to his testimony about how much harassment he's faced since having a five-minute interview and just a few words he said and how much harassment has come his way. He's a very well-spoken man. Understanding all that, because I know you're well-read on this, why stick your head up? I mean, you're a young guy. You got kids.

There's nothing for me to gain personally in terms of career, to be honest. But I take seriously the ethics of medicine, and I think my goal is we need to learn to dialogue. If you start censoring one half of the conversation, to get back to South Africa, I grew up under apartheid South Africa. I was probably 16 years old when there was a transition and Mandela came into power. So for the first 16, 17 years, I went to, you know, the first two-thirds of my schooling was in a white-zone school. I grew up, so I grew up under an authoritarian regime that censored everything. And the thing is we didn't know, because we were, I was in the suburbs, you went to school.

We had our TV, all of our channels were government channels. We had three TV stations. It was all our news. Everything was censored. The books that you could get in a library were all approved by government. your mail coming in from overseas would be read if you had the wrong contacts or whatever and your mail could be redacted or red. And as a kid, I didn't know that was happening.

We couldn't go into Soweto, people from Swetow, you know. So I didn't know that there were the South African police and military where, you know, that Suweto was like an occupied state. We had no idea that any of that was happening. the version of history that we learned in school kind of spoke about the you know it was just one perspective

and to so I'm very concerned about censorship and I won't I won't back down for that it's just we need to we need to just pause and reflect and think what are we doing where are we going with this

And, you know, I think in proverbs it says there's wisdom in the council of many. If you choose yes, man, as your counsellors, so anyone in authority, if the only voices you are listening to are people who are too scared to say anything that you want to prove of, you have a huge blind spot. And that's why I wrote this book, Crucial Conversations. It's an awesome book. they should give you some advertising fee. And in HHS, in medical leadership, we're recommended to do this training specifically and read this book.

And it's tools for talking when stakes are high, so much like this conversation we're having today. And so there's a little section on dialogue that I'd like to read. Sure. When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information from themselves and others out into the open.

That's it. At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of relevant information. People openly and honestly express their opinions, share their feelings, and articulate their theories. They willingly and capably share their views, even when their ideas, are controversial or unpopular. It's the one thing that, and precisely what, Kevin and the other

extremely effective communicators we studied, were routinely able to achieve. Now, to put a label on this spectacular talent, it's called dialogue. Dialogue, noun, the free flow of meaning between two or more people. We have lost the ability to dialogue. And that can take us to dialogue. down a very dangerous road. And people that are, if you silence a proportion of society, you might think it's for the good of everyone. But where are you in five years' time? What voices, you know?

And that's why I want someone who I don't disagree with. I want them to be free to speak, because that gives me the freedom to speak. And I have a right to speak. So I have a right to speak, but I have a responsibility to listen. And there needs to be empathy in that. And I mean, it's crazy that this seems unconventional what I'm saying or radical. This is a foundation of Western liberal democracy, of freedom, of a multi-party democracy.

if you start silencing a certain portion of a population, you're going off into another form of government and culture. And I grew up under a fascist regime. I know what it looks like. And if I think back, I'm upset with my... I mean, I have ancestry from a British, French, German, Jewish, Hungarian, so pretty much a mix, and the British and French makes me half Canadian. But I'm upset that they were so short-sighted that our great-grandfathers from the National Party,

even though my grandfather, who was Afrikaans, really stood against that. But what were they thinking? Do they think they could continue that oppressive regime and oppress a huge portion of the population infinitely? So ultimately, for that short-term gain of their short-term wealthy white supreme nation, they really shot their grandkids, great-grandkids in the foot. and there is a diaspora of South Africans all over the world. You'll find, you know, I've got cousins in London and Melbourne, Australia.

And it goes back to those decisions. So this is so crucial. I think we're sitting, you know, I mean, a lot of people say COVID is like a pause and we can use it to make wise decisions in going forward. I think we haven't, we've, we like paused, but with our ears closed and our eyes shut, listening in our little echo chambers in social media and only listening to one side of a story,

and we're going full steam ahead down a road, and we don't even know where it leads. I don't know if I'm making sense, but I take that really seriously. And that's why I'm speaking out not, as protest, not because I want to be political. I don't. I would honestly rather be rowing on a river or hiking in the mountains.

But we need to learn to dialogue. And if we can't do it, I'm concerned about where are we going to be in five, ten years' time. And especially if, you know, a lot of the voices that we're silencing, it's one thing if it's extreme voices. and you know the bell curve, right? So where's the camera? There's the bell curve. And most people are in the middle,

and it's like hockey players, right? To get in the NHL, you're in, to get in the NHL, you're in that, you're an outlier, like Malcolm Gladwell in his book. You're in that 3% or less. What's it in? But most people will be there in the middle somewhere,

most hockey players, far from NHL level. And then you'll get, people that just can't skate or hit a puck or whatever on the other on the other end but but everything kind of has a bell curve with with anything from height to weight to um and what we're doing we're not silencing and censoring the extreme voices we're silenced we're silencing and censoring pretty middle down the road people like dr piercori i's the ICU physician in the States.

He's like middle, like spot on. He is not fringe. Dr. Bridal is, you listen to him, Doc, he ain't extreme at all. Actually, I was just going to say, like, when I listen to you talk, it's amazing that more people like yourself aren't, and I shouldn't say that. There are lots of people out there doing it. But on mainstream media, they don't, this type of talk, gets pushed to the back burner or silenced or tossed around

and not pushed out to a lot of people. And the ability to produce and talk about and push fear has never been more evident in my lifetime than right now and still going on. It is still going on. And it's even coming from the opposite side now, right? Where the vaccine, if you, if the people who don't want to get a vaccine, even their fear-mongering push on why you shouldn't like it's palpable at all places it just is and the ability to just talk through it's it's been the last month Andrew has been really cool to watch because there's been more doctors and more specialized people stepping up and talking and they're very much like you they have to they have to back it up by talking like I'm not this I'm not this here's my credentials blah blah blah and then they talk and they're talking exactly like you

you and just just very common sense which is like enjoyable to hear and honestly it gets through to me way more than pushing the fear the thing is is a lot of it doesn't grow up the social chain or the social media chain because social media feeds off of the extreme takes on both sides yeah and they skyrocket and you got to do your own research and cut through some of the BS to get to where you are yeah and it's really interesting to hear your take of where you lived an apartheid you're not the I've had a chiropractor in town here, Fred Murray, I do archive interviews. And if people haven't listened to that, you should go back and we dig into him growing up in

South Africa and living in apartheid because it just, it blows my brain that more people wouldn't stand up against that. But now you feel what a government trying to censor and push a message really feels like. We did not know. That's the thing. That message never got to us. And I remember my dad was a pilot. I went with him as a teenager.

I went with him to London on a trip. And he took me to the South African Embassy and there were people protesting outside. And I'm like, what's that about? And yeah, he had a conversation with me about what's happening in the rest of the world against. And we had no idea that it was just because we lived in this little censored, curated,

bubble. And it was, you know, we only heard one side of the story and that they try to perpetuate that system. And I think once they, and this is interesting, in 1994, no, it was 1992, there was a referendum to the, to, because only whites could vote, right? So there was a referendum whether we should open up the vote or not. But now you must understand the white population was less than

20% of the population. So if you open up the vote, you're giving away power, guaranteed. And there were some kind of far left-wing parties whose slogan was like, kill the farmer, or let's push the whites into the sea. So it was scary. But it was an overwhelming yes vote. We need to, we choose democracy. We're going to open up the vote.

And there was that two-year process. Mandela was released. There's an awesome movie called Invictus around that with a Springbok rugby team at the time. We won the World Cup that, you know, after opening up, it was an amazing time. And it was like having, you know, having your eyes opened. But until that referendum, I mean, we were just living in a bubble. And I think people who, a lot of people who were awake had to actually flee lots of people. Like there's a famous poet who stood up, Afrikaans poet Brayton Breitembach.

And they lived in exile. Many folk left the country, lived in exile. Many musicians, there were lots of South African jazz musicians. So lots, and so they got the advocacy out there, but living in the country, it was kind of like the Truman show. Like the Jim Carrey Truman Show. Yeah, I mean, that's, if you live in a censored world, right? I mean, and you think, wait a minute, there's something going on here. But, yeah, I mean, that's an extreme example, but it's, I live through that, right?

I mean, it's like how many times, I'm sure my listeners, think like me at times, you just go, like, someone's just off. Like this, this feels like what is going on? And I, heck, I think all of us are pretty rational people. But when they start trying to divide you and push out these, like things, you just, there's no way to like, And then they don't allow you to talk and you're all like, you know, think of some of the stuff we've had to deal with over the last 16 months, right? Like, nobody in your house.

Anywhere you go, there's a mascot, no congregating, all these things. I can go down the list of Canadian rights and freedoms, right? And then you don't talk and all you see is social media pushing the extremes and media pushing the same numbers over and over and over again. And, I mean, that's why I go back to this fear and the stress and everything else. Like it is helpful. You could cut it with a knife. It was so thick there for so long and now You know it feels like we're coming out of it, but I don't know it's it's a strange Strange time to be alive and maybe there's always been strange times to be alive

Heck you certainly lived in a country where it was Um Difficult shall we say like to to come out of that and see that must been an odd Sensation to look back and and go wow like I had no idea and now to see what's happening in Canada must be almost surreal. Well, it's certainly unexpected, but it's not just kind of, it's the world, right? Yes. And I think, sure, democracy is messy and it's, it's, it's not that efficient. A totalitarian system is very efficient. Like, incredibly, if you've got a leader who doesn't have to worry about the four-year election cycle, if you know you're, you're,

you're in for the next 20, 25 years, you can play the last. long game, you know, so how just on economic, how do you compete with China economically with their system and I, and, but we need to reflect and not just, you know, embrace things like surveillance. And there's a book, Yuvall, Noah Hariri, he's a historian and a philosopher. And he talks on, he's got a book called 20, 21 lessons for the 21st century. and he's talking about this fourth industrial revolution. I mean, we're going through explosive change on so many levels. So we have the biotech level.

MRNA vaccines fall into that category, computing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, space exploration, digital currencies which open up with everyone connected, which opens up the possibility of a centralized digital currencies, that sort of thing. There's so much possibility there, but there's also like any huge change. If you just run into it blindly, you know, you're going to hit some walls or fall into some holes. So he's, Yvalna Hariri says, this is the time we should not be letting shareholders who are looking for a quarterly and profits, you know,

this short quarterly profit cycle and stock prices, they're running so much of the innovation, which is great. You need that. You need capitalism to push innovation, right? But if they have, if it's people with the big bucks that have all the voice and you have your philosophers and pastors and just your old, people who've lived, you know, your elderly.

Instead of being locked up in long-term care homes, if they actually have a voice and say, well, I would just pause and think, what do we want? And is this going to take us there? You know, not just, oh, the next phone is so cool. It's got three cameras. Let's, you know, and woo-hoo. Let's just full speed ahead. Like, where are we going? Where are we going?

Where are we going? Putting our kids in front of screens. Like, they're being raised by algorithms. like that's they're going to think their whole mental makeup is going to be different from my like from you know over over one or two generations the the change in in culture and on so many levels is that the change is so huge so you need to pause reflect and think about what's the game plan here we've got all these amazing tools we've got AI but are we just going to go full speed ahead because we want to beat China or are we going to pause and

reflect and say what do we want from this and are we just looking for a comfortable convenient life where we can just sit back and press a button and everything's done for us or do we actually want community and freedom for instance you know and just you know what are what are our values you know and and You know, our culture has, I grew up in a Commonwealth country to, you know, British, French, European ancestry. And I grew up in a, I have close, close, dear friends who are native First Nations in South Africa. And I really respect their view on life. They're much less individualistic. They actually, if they're not part of community, they struggle to make.

sense of their life. And there's a word in South African language is called Ubuntu. And it means I am because we are. Right. So, you know, things that are truly valuable, like family, community, and our freedoms that have taken hundreds of years to, you know, to get to this point. to curate, yeah, to bring about. We could be just destroying it, throwing it out the window. Literally throwing it out the window because of we're chasing stock prices, you know, or. So I think we need to pause, reflect.

We need the old people to speak, the elders. We talk about that all the time, you know, the elders, but they don't have a voice. We need to listen. We need to start conversations and dialogues where people have opposing opinions, because that's normal, right? Especially in a diverse country like Canada. And we need to reflect and think before we just barge ahead. I like how you bring up the elderly.

I read a book about a big bear. chief around this area, right? Indigenous tribe. And one of the things that I found interesting, I brought out this example over and over and over again, because as a young guy, I always thought, you know, why do you want an old guy leading? For sure, you want, like, a guy in the prime of his life.

I don't know what the prime is. We can argue about that, but let's call it 35 to 50, somewhere in there is the prime of your life. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's younger. Maybe it's older. But you kind of get the idea. And then in the book, it talked about tribes having two chiefs.

One is, and I'll butcher this, so I apologize to anyone who knows a little better than me. But one is one of them being one of wisdom, so an elderly person in peace times, understood, and it's seen things over a long chunk of time, right? Like things change, things go in cycles. you know, for them dealing with the harshness of the weather, knowing where to go to hide from that, maybe understanding the cycle of the Buffalo where they're going to be, that type of thing, right?

But he's seen things over longer than a five-year span. You know, he's got wisdom on his side. And one of the cool things about being in here, Andrew, is doing interviews for the archives. I've got to interview people who are 99 years old and can tell you they don't remember money, right? Like, think about that. We didn't have money.

That's like, whoa. That's like taking a time machine and going back in the past and hearing some stories. But then the other chief they had, the other leader, was a wartime one. And it was the guy that I think of, right? The energetic go out, we need to win this or we don't survive kind of thing. And they had the two. And I hear what you're saying because that makes a lot of sense to me, right? Like, you know, what is going on?

Like maybe we just need to. Guys, like we've got all this data on X. You know, I want to pull us back into, I find this chat so fascinating, just understanding now your background. This is what I do. I love hearing this story and where your brain goes and some of the experiences have you had that are shaping why you're sitting in this room right now. It's fascinating to me. I'm so curious about what's going on right now. Is there other doctors in the area?

You were just on an island, you got a little flag, and everybody thinks you're the crazy man for coming and sitting in here and wanting to talk about kind of, you know, the vaccine and some of the rollouts that have been going on and kids getting the vaccination and things like that. Are you on an island? Or are there tons of people, just like there's tons of people like me that want to talk about it, but do not want to get in front of a hot mic

and talk about it? I've many colleagues. have shared things with me that they would not feel free to share openly for sure. And I think one big issue is, you know, clinicians who are actually treating patients have a very different perspective and even a different ethos and foundation from public health. And one needs to understand this. public health is important and up until now public health would have been you know you focused on your your general health promotion and health prevention so you have your vaccination programs and these

are developed over many years and that you know with the aim of of preventing illness and then you'd have little outbreaks of you know hep a or a C-diff or you know you know you know you you have a little maybe a specific bug and MRSA in a long-term home and and then it's it's kind of appropriate to go and lock that down and it's it's like firefighting right or and you you've focused on these things and so to have a global pandemic you know that that public health model I think we need to up, you know, as we exit the emergency, because the emergency is really, really over. Or at least there's, we have a lot of data now,

a lot of understanding as opposed to early 2020. So we need to think, okay, is the public health model missing something, is it lacking? And I think if there were more clinicians that had a voice, people like Pierre Corey, who's a frontline doctor, they're part of the FLCCC, frontline, clinical care clinicians. They're in the US, and they were an ICU team, and they were treating people on the ground. So if you have someone on a ventilator, that could die in the next couple days, multi-organ failure, doing poorly.

And you're an experienced ICU physician. And now their team, right, he's one of the authors of the point of care ultrasound textbook in ICU. So he helped to pioneer one of the game-changing growth areas in ICU medicine and critical care medicine. Other people on his team, there's other authors on him. his paper and other physicians on the FLCCC. Dr. Malick is incidentally or also originally South African. He's the second most published ICU physician in the world. So to call him fringe or to

silence him, it's just counterintuitive completely. And now they, so they're clinicians, they have a sick patient in front of them. They can't, and short, just because they want to treat this patient doesn't mean they anti-vaxes, right? That's absurd. Like vaccines are one of the pillars of a pandemic response. It makes sense. Just like prevention of spread is those are two pillars. And they're both important. And you need to figure out.

And you need to go and look down like how do you do quarantines? And that's going to be a huge debate over the next years. How do we effectively do quarantines and do lockdowns work? You know, how do you use masks? Because I know lots of problems with them that are actually not used properly. And I'm not advocating for any position there, but we're going to reflect on that, go through lots of data, and we need to figure out, okay, how do we do this in future without destroying the middle class and shutting, you know, pushing everyone into debt and locking up kids at home and stopping sport for, you know, that's a vital part of a healthy lifestyle for a kid. And we can talk about that later. So those two pillars, but in the meantime, this ICU physician who's got a huge amount of experience has a sick patient in front of them, you're going to try and treat their patients.

So you're going to, like a clinician, you're a detective. You've got a unique patient in front of you with a condition, but there's always individual factors. So you're going to interpret your, you're going to take a history, look at comorbidities, you're going to do it physically. examination, you're going to do special investigations, blood tests and scans and all sorts, and then you look at all that and you think, okay, so this is going on. It looks like, this looks like a hyper-inflammatory response centered in the lungs and now affecting the kidneys and they're in cut renal failure secondary to that. And then, oh, and we've got blood clotting going on here. And you don't have to wait for a peer-reviewed study sponsored by

a big pharmaceutical company before you give a blood thinner or before you use steroids. And they were incidentally using steroids long before dexamethyzone and prednisone were approved by the WHO and came trickle down in protocols because it takes time for big agencies to sift through data. And they were told at the time you're doing the wrong thing. And it appears, it turns out they were doing the right thing and they were doing it. ahead of the game, but it's because they had a sick patient in front of them and they were using their toolbox to treat that patient. And we've got this pharmacopier at our disposal, just like a hockey

team, you know, you've got a set of tools, you've got a toolbox. And as clinicians, we've always been free to use that within an ethical framework, always considering risk and benefit. And they've pioneered along with actually treating people with COVID-19 with a lot of repurpose drugs that are cheap, which is a good thing. But it's not a good thing for shareholders and for big pharmaceutical companies of patent cheap drugs. And we can talk about that more. But I think the perspective from a clinician as opposed to a public health, where they're, sitting at a desk, looking at numbers, you're looking at population level things. So you're always looking at, it's numbers. You don't have a real person in front of you. And that's a game

changer if it's a real person. And I can share some real stories if you like. I would honestly, I would certainly love to hear some real stories. I think for the area specifically, to hear some real stories kind of brings it home. It's right. It's one thing to hop on and hear about, to oh, Francis, Dr. Francis Christian at a Sassum, which is literally right there. But for some reason, it doesn't, you know, people are, oh yeah, right? To have a guy stand up in our area, in this area, and want to talk about it, want to share some real stories. I'd love to hear some. Yeah.

And again, I'm just, I think we need to start dialoguing. And otherwise, we won't be able to look at data from an unbiased person. perspective, right? So two stories that really impacted me personally and actually made, I think that it's a big reason why I've maybe here today. And before I share them just a personal story, I have three kids, 11, 13, 15. I'm very blessed with my family. I have a lovely wife who homeschools. And people already put me in a box because of that. But we just, she's awesome and she pours so much into them.

And because of, you know, there's so many resources out there these days. So I know we can give them just the best education possible at home. And we're part of a good community in that. And we have a, we do a lot of things together. We ski together. All three of my kids went down a double black dime. with me this last winter at Lake Louise. And it's, I mean, I'm speechless.

It's a dream. But my middle son, Thomas, had leukemia when he was four. And that pulled the carpet from under my feet. I was halfway through my mastive medicines and family medicine. And three years of chemo. So I've been on the other side. He was treated in the hospital where I trained. I've seen side effects of drugs in children.

And for leukemia that would have killed him, you have a huge threshold for side effects. The side effects were crazy. It's kind of like, I say, I mean, chemotherapy is like, it's like bombing Berlin to try and get Hitler. but the amount of collateral damage is huge. And that's why it's exciting that there's new, you know, through like MRNA technology for cancer is very exciting.

And it's going to be, you know, because the side effects of chemo on a child, and so three years of intensive chemo. And he's such a legend. and got through it. But a couple things, we learned fear is the enemy, right? So I think that's one big lesson here. If we go through this again, let's do everything we can to reduce fear, not increase it.

Fear is the enemy when it comes to walking a road like that, especially a three-year-old. I had to be there for him. And there's a much bigger picture than just medicine. The oncologists, they were awesome, the pediatricians, but they had a very narrow focus, right? But there's a much bigger picture to health. And nutrition is important. The emotional, mental side of things is really important.

The spiritual side of things is critical. And we couldn't have got through it without prayer, without, and I, you know, peace, without the peace of God that keeps fear out. just it's real when you walk a road like that. And so I have a different perspective. So you talk about colleagues. But I think it's a, I think it's a family medicine perspective. It's a, you know, looking at a bigger picture of health, a bigger picture of, like the person sitting in front of that patient, they're not just an organ. It's a unique person with a context, with a family, with fears and beliefs. And one needs to listen and explore those things.

And so two patients. One was a 15-year-old girl that I know. I coached my kid's soccer. Now we haven't done soccer for two seasons. I was on call. Middle of the night, she came in with a medication overdose, a suicide attempt. And we see it often in that age. Often, you know, it's after a bad breakup or bullying online or whatever.

And they take, but they don't really want to die. It's more of a cry for help thing in that age group, especially a teenage girl. But what shocked me was this girl that I know from soccer, who's usually at that time, it was, say, late April. If she was on the soccer field, she would be the happiest kid. in town. That's what doesn't have the happiest home. But now she's been locked up in this, locked up alone at home on a computer screen. Who knows what she's watching. What is breaking her down there and ends up in emerge in the middle of the night. If she was playing soccer,

there is no way she would have been there. There's just no way. And I'll stick my neck out. And she said to me when I spoke to her, she said, I want to die. That was a wake up call. Like, what are we, what have we done? What are we doing? And can we reflect and just think, like, can't we just be honest and say, okay, like, we made a few mistakes. And next time we need to do more to protect the vulnerable, to protect people in long-term cares, to protect the isolated and lonely.

and for the kids, right? Now, a COVID infection for her would be zero risk, right? Practically, I mean, there is a small risk, like being hit by a car or getting a concussion at that sport or like one of my kids falling on a double black diamond and breaking a neck. Their life has risk, right? So we can't all like, stay safe.

Like, we need to think. Someone said, you know, we used to value free. and we would kind of risk safety for that. Now we're willing to give away freedom for the sake of safety. And what does that safety even look like? Is a kid alone at home in front of a computer screen on the internet where she can be exposed to trawlers and who knows what? Or a 13 year old boy that should be playing hockey on a playing a like 18 plus violent team game? Are they safe?

Let's put it this way, Andrew. I'm 35. Yeah. Being stuck at home and I get, this is healthy. Like for me, it's healthy to talk people. But trying to deal with everything you can find on the internet, even in regards to what we're talking about, is over, it's over fucking overwhelming. Like, it's just, and I'm a grown-ass adult that's supposed to be protecting my children and everything else. And I'm trying to steer through, you talk, the little rapids of the, I feel like I'm out in the middle of the ocean and a little wee,

paddling boat just trying to hold on here at times right like and I'm the and I'm the dad of the family right yeah like kids are not equipped they're not no for what we're going on and on top of that we all have an onus on herself to stand up and be like this doesn't feel right like you know I got a good friend and Ken Rutherford who always tells me you know the government works for us you know that's what it is if we don't like it we got to voice our concerns and and start to let people know this isn't right. Yeah. And hearing about what you're talking about is just another one in the list of things that

doesn't get reported. It just doesn't. Yeah. And this is just really important dialogue. Like, so we're keeping our kids safe, but what, there's been no conversation about how to keep a 15 or 14 year old boy who's now doing school at home on his own with internet access. every day where he can click a couple of clicks and he's on a on on a hardcore porn site where was the effort in keeping that kid safe i don't know how i would have done that

like if i was 14 it's alone at home on a computer with internet access would i've been listening would i've been in math class or what i you know where um Yeah, or violent, you know, violent TV games, just whereas kids should be out playing hockey or whatever. And sure, maybe indoor rinks weren't the safest place to be or could be areas for spread. But there's like how many sloughs and ponds and dams in all over Canada? Like where how much money, and there's so much money printing going on. there was a little subsidy for each town to pay for a farmer to keep a little pond clear with with a skid steer and put up a couple nets and kids can go and change

in their parents car and you just play non-contact hockey where you know you you figure it out how do you play hockey and keep two meters you would come up with some rules and kids could be out there having fun well fresher the best one i mean i mean you're was tag and I was like how do you play tag with little kids and they use noodles and I'm like that's still fun that was still actually I was playing tag with the kids yeah our kids with noodles and they thought it was the greatest thing in the world now I don't know that doesn't translate exactly to hockey but that's called being creative about the situation and I think like one of the challenges as a soccer coach with kids to to stop kids bunching up and actually if you watch a European

football team how they're spread out over the field and the passing and it's just beautiful to get kids to do that. Now this was actually an opportunity to teach kids real soccer because you want to socially distance in a good soccer game, right? So I think we missed opportunities there. I think we kids have, there's been a huge disservice to children. So there was one story. The other one was a lady in her 70s and because I work in a small town. Now I do, I primarily do anesthesia. So I've also been in a bit of a bubble. And we've been focused on surgical catch-ups. So we've been intensely, you know, we've been doing a lot more surgeries than usual to get through numbers. And it's kind of a, we've been very

fortunate that we haven't been shut down, except in that initial time. So we've been pretty efficient at our hospital but it's also kind of sheltered me from frontline care of people with COVID but I do do I work in the emergency department too and because I do anesthesia I'm called for intubations so I was called for an intubation lady in her 70s very very obese and obviously that's a huge risk factor so she had AIDS and obesity and I know I know her because I'd she's difficult yeah I'd met her in the hospital before through another encounter and I know her daughter and I know her grandkids and that's one of the challenges in working and blessings of working in a small town is you actually know your patients and you get

to know people they're not just a number and it makes it very real and And her lungs were failing, and the ICU team in the city had said, we need to put her on a ventilator, we need to intubate her and ventilator. But we all know the prognosis when you go that route, especially with her weight. The prognosis was really low, and it was a very, very touching and challenging time with watching her daughter there. knowing this could be the last time she speaks to her mom. And they prayed together and there were tears. And she knew she might not wake up.

She might wake, you know, she'll either wake, she could wake up in a hospital in the city. She could wake up on the other side. She might, and the biggest thing when I spoke to her about it and about, she said she's okay with dying and ready in that piece, but she wants to spend more time with her grandkids. And that's why she was willing to go, she wanted to go that route. And it all went well and outside and the ambulance transfer went well.

But once she was in the city, a couple days later, they actually told her daughter that her prognosis was zero. And now I haven't spoken to the physicians, so I've just spoken to the daughter because I know her, but she said, so that's from her side, she said, they said, zero chance of her making it. So in other words, we need to start talking about turning off machines soon. So she said, listen, I've heard about ivermectin. I've heard there been people in the States that have been on a ventilator, they've been given ibupton, and they made it. and quite quickly.

And now again, this is secondhand information from the daughter, but when I followed up with her, but she was in tears. She said the doctor that she dealt with, who's a specialist, said, there is no chance that we will give ovimectin because it is not scientific. So Dr. Pierre Corrie, who is an ICU physician of huge staff, he's he's a Connemad David and he's published a review on the ivermectin for prevention and treatment of of COVID-19 which is it's a groundbreaking review when I read it it was just like this is awesome and he also thought when he when they got there we started using

it and when they collected more and more data and then they started seeing observational data in in third world countries where now observational data is usually it's not the gold standard. A randomized clinical trial is the gold standard. But if you've got observational data over a whole country like Peru who rolled out IVMectin over eight cities, so you're doing a study on millions, and when you get the same graphs in eight cities,

and when statisticians go and kind of do their best to iron out any biases and other confounding variables so that it's the only difference between populations is whether you've got ivermectin or not. To look at that data, to see mortality just plummet like a stone. And the same happened in India. And India, the WHO actually recommended against ivermectin use in India when they were going through the third wave. And we all know of the Indian or Delta variant.

and there's concern for our fall, whether it's going to come this way and how well the vaccines are going to work and all of that. So they're going through this wave, and they're a country of over a billion. So, I mean, you can imagine the death toll. I mean, there were stories of bodies floating down the Ganges River. We saw the videos of the burning people

because they had nowhere to put them. Yeah. And now, ivermectin has been, out for more than 30 years. Here we'll know it as a veterinary medication, but in the tropical countries, it's actually a Nobel Prize-winning medication for eradicating river blindness and elephanthiasis

in a lot of tropical areas. So there were communities in some tropical, third-world poor countries and tropical areas where the majority of people like, I think, age 40 or so, would actually go blind from these parasites and Ivermectin completely eradicated that so it's been given there's more than four billion doses have been given to humans and it has got some of the best safety data in the world on the WHO safety there from macro vigilance data they've got a database and this this spans

like over 30 years and I think 20 there's something like 20 deaths and 5,000 at events in over four billion doses so and it's off patent so it's dirt cheap costs a few dollars it's accessible in third world countries because they use it for for parasites now people say oh but that's just it's obviously doesn't work because it works for parasites no the reason people started using it and if one honest goes and listens to there's a great talk by dr. Pierre Corey on the dark horse podcast yeah Brett Weinstein where where he he actually explains it And there was some scientist who was doing studies on repurpose drugs and looking at

effectiveness against different viruses because we haven't made that much progress in antivirals. And so there was data out there that ivermectin kills a virus, kills SARS-CoVi in a petri dish. So that was reason to start using it. Now, just because it works in a petri dish, doesn't. mean it's going to work in a human body. You might not get the same concentration, etc. But if you've got a known drug that's been used on that scale, more than four billion doses, that's dirt cheap, the only problem is though, and it's Achilles heel has been that no one's going to make a huge amount of money from it. So you bring me to...

So, yeah, so, and just to remember that story, that, so a patient, that my patient was, they would not give ivermectin to someone who had zero chance of living. So what risk was there? What cost to the healthcare system? We're already, I mean, we've spent a huge amount to go to all the effort of ICU care. So a few extra dollars. Like, what harm could possibly have been done? And I feel it's incredibly arrogant. And that to say that or to, like, because this, her daughter was tears. And she made it in the end. She survived.

Imagine if she had died the next day. No. So, I mean, after being given a 0% prognosis. So is that just to maybe even try and defend some of the doctors? Is that because of the pressure above them to not administer something that hasn't been given approval? Well, that's when, so that's when I looked into it. She asked me, but so I went and and I got Pierre Corrie's review. I mean, it wasn't published yet. It was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics in May, June edition. So it has been published now, but the pre-published,

there was, their earlier reports were, were available. And I'm good friends with a pharmacist in South Africa who was he was the head pharmacist for a whole health region. So I trust his view on drugs. And he was giving, he was giving me information about Avamectin early on. And I think, you know, third world countries that didn't have as much access to vaccine have been experimenting with it a lot more and have been more free to experiment with it. So I started reading up on it and I was blown away. And then I thought, but if all this data is out there, why are we not using it? Yeah, it's sadly not recommended. And there's a very thorough document. Page 3, it says it's not recommended to prevent or treat COVID. More research is needed. The original document was out in

February. It was updated in April. And they do continually update when new studies. So they're looking at all the new studies. So I've actually, as an advocate for early treatment, which, by the way, I do not see why it should threaten a vaccine rollout. Because that patient in ICU or a patient who's just been diagnosed, it's too late for a vaccine, right? So that patient, and as a clinician who sees real patients, you want to be able to give them something.

And the more tools, the better, the more options, the better. So, and I understand more now what some of the issues are. But anyway, so it's still not recommended the last time I looked at a couple days ago. But if you read through the actual, because on page three, the summary recommendations say it's not recommended. So I went and spoke to our hospital's clinical pharmacologist, and she showed her peer Corey's review. And she was like, wow, this is awesome. this is a game changer. And I said, will you find out more if we can access it?

Because I'd also been to all the pharmacies in town, and their college was saying we can't use it. And I showed them the review, and they're like, yeah, that looks great. But our college says it's not licensed for that purpose. But we always do stuff off license. I can use Propofol, which killed Michael Jackson, to treat a migraine in Emerge, based on a couple of studies. that shows that it works.

So this is, this is, this is, this is something new to you then. Like, well, this is, it perplexed me.

So, so I went and went through that whole document. And now I'm not on, on the level of a scientific advisory group or, you know, I'm a generalist. Okay. So I don't pretend to know more than I do.

I'm very aware of my limitations. But as far as I can see, but, But then I trust voices like Pierre Corey and his team who are ICU heavyweights. Now, if you're going to read that whole document, they mentioned in there, I think there were seven trials, six of them are randomized controlled trials. Now, a big issue, people have said safety is a problem. No, I don't see why safety of Avivmectin would be a problem, but we can go into that

because it's been out for so long. And if you look at the WHO safety data, it's actually amazing. And the other thing is that they say a lot of the trials, they're not big trials. They're done in third world countries. They're not done in North America. They're not done in Europe. So then the question is, why have we not been doing lots of trials? We've had how much time now?

You know, Pierre Corrie was, I think he presented to US Congress in November of 2020 already about Ivermectin, expecting it. he thought the pandemic's over and he was just blown away at the response that there was just silence from from the public health agencies and all that so we've had time right so but if you go and but sure if trials if the quality of trials is poor you can't always act on that that data but i went and read read through that and there's six randomized controlled trials there that that scientific advisory group actually say are fair to good quality, and they show mortality benefit, they show ICU admission benefit, they show effective prevention.

So there was one interesting study in Pierre Cori's review, where in Argentina they gave, they wanted to look at. look at whether it helped to prevent COVID in health care workers. They took 1,200 health care workers. They didn't randomize it because of the ethical issues around that. It was so that was a bit complicated. So they gave them the choice. They could opt in or out. So 700 or so patients decided to take ivermectin for prevention. And not one, during the study period, not one of them got COVID. So out of 700 people on a preventive dose, and I believe it was, a once weekly single dose.

So it's kind of like taking a malaria preventative, just a once a week dose. The group that didn't take it, so 500 or so patients, I speak under correction, I think it was 58 patients, something like that, 58 people got COVID, but I don't have the numbers in front of me,

I speak under correction with that. But I mean the statistical significance of comparing any number with zero, is infinite, right? So, um, yeah, so,

but the problem is, it's a threat to the vaccine rollout because I initially, I was perplexed. But there's legislation, because the vaccines are, they have emergency use authorization. Yeah. So I,

here's what you talk about, knowing your boundaries or your limitations very well. Yeah. Well, in this realm, I go, well, I don't mind. I literally have not been a medical doctor, nothing right. I just, I do all the reading like you. I said this on the phone.

I do all the reading too. I talk about it in groups, and I understand the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. When you have people that are held in high regards in your profession, say things like there's an avalanche of data supporting it. I don't need to know what Ivermectin is to go, well, it's preventative, and they obviously like it.

You talk about all these different trials. You talk about Pierre Corrie and all the work he's done on the front lines and his experiences with it, and you just start to listen. It's like, sounds like it works. And then you bring up, well, this is the line that, when I heard it by Byron Bridal, I went, how isn't that like the headline? That is, we cannot have emergency use authorization of vaccines if it is recognized there are effective and safe treatments available.

So by suppressing Ivermectin as an effective treatment at the start of this thing, they can have emergency use authorization for vaccines. Essentially is what I take from it. Yeah, so because of that piece of legislation, it's a threat to the vaccine rollout. And vaccines are one of the pillars of a pandemic response. They play an important role, but treatment of sick patients is also. So this perplexes me. Like, so governments have had the sweeping powers, sort of emergency powers to redefine

our socio-economic landscape. You know, you can shut down businesses, et cetera, et cetera. New legislation has been passed, what the C-10 bill or whatever. that was effectively allowing curating of media content. If that piece of legislation was in the way was a threat to the vaccine rollout, why not meet and change the legislation even just temporarily because of this pandemic? We're in this unique situation. Are we going to throw out this effective treatment because of this.

it's a threat to the vaccine rollout? And like, what are the motives here? We're throwing out something that no one's going to make money from. Why not just even temporarily, get a Supreme Court injunction or whatever to suspend that legislation temporarily? That says you can have Ivermectin used, but still have a vaccine roll. So we can treat. So four pillars. Public health measures to limit spread.

vaccines on either side and then in the middle treating sick people and preferably early because if you can prevent and I know there's there's like I think it's Dr. Peter McCullough says they've they've had in his experience where they are able and free to use early treatment protocols and that's the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons and their protocols are on their website for early treatment and they say the trick is to use it as soon as possible because you want to use it while there's viral replication. You can prevent hospitalizations. You can reduce ICU admissions.

And that was the whole reason for the lockdowns, was because ICU's were being overwhelmed. So if you can, and even if it's a small, you know, even those who are maybe critical or not sold by the data, even if it's a modest reduction. maybe the third wave of lockdowns was not necessary. What difference would that have made for small businesses, for families, for kids in school? For kids in school?

Et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, it just perplexes me. And I think that's one of the big lessons and something that we need to dialogue about. And, you know, public health agencies globally that are essentially high, hiding data and standing like Merck, they changed, like there was never an issue with Ivermectin safety, but now all of a sudden they've put out a statement on the website that they have safety concerns around Ivermectin. Well, you want to talk about strange.

Hey, folks, thanks for tuning in. This was part one of Andrew Liebenberg. He'll be back on Wednesday with the second part of his episode. If you enjoyed this, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with your friends. Appreciate all you guys tuning in and giving me your feedback on what you think of all these conversations. So we're going to catch up to you guys Wednesday. Until then.