A Personal Look Back at Our First Three Years of Saving Lives Around the World
At the beginning of the lockdown—on March 29, 2020 at 2:45 PM to be exact—I received a Facebook message from a friend in Chicago that instantaneously altered the course of my life.
It read: “I have sent you a letter and protocol for COVID-19 written by Dr. Paul Marik. I grew up with him in South Africa and I think his protocol is worth reading. I am not qualified to critique this protocol but I know that Paul is brilliant and has done incredible work treating sepsis in the past and is very well published. Would be interested to hear what you and your husband think about his protocol.”
I and my husband Fred (a pulmonologist/critical care physician who operates an outpatient practice) were at home reading that Sunday afternoon when her message arrived. I immediately emailed Dr. Marik’s letter (meant for then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo) and protocol to Fred—who quickly scanned the documents and then looked up in astonishment.
“This is from THE Paul Marik??” he asked.
“Uh…I suppose so,” I said. “Why? How do you know him? Who is he?”
“Oh my. This is just incredible,” Fred said, almost breathless. “I have been reading the papers of Dr. Paul Marik for years. The man is a genius, and he has published literally just hundreds of papers in Critical Care Medicine. Wow. THE Paul Marik!!” he exclaimed.
Fred then clicked on the file of Dr. Marik’s protocol and read it through. The protocol outlined the use of IV steroids, along with IV Vitamin C and Heparin to take down lung inflammation and prevent clotting in critically ill COVID-19 patients. Soon, Fred looked up at me with an expression of total amazement on his face.
“I can’t believe this. WOW! This protocol makes all the clinical sense in the world! It’s GENIUS!” exclaimed Fred, who was already successfully using oral steroids along with antibiotics to keep his office patients from becoming critically ill with COVID. “I mean, I’m looking at this and I can see that this is going to change everything—people are going to be saved by the tens of thousands using this protocol. This is just BRILLIANT!”
That Facebook message—which I received from my friend because she knew I worked in marketing and communications and hoped I could help Dr. Marik— marked the very beginning of my exhilarating, frustrating, dizzying, horrifying, lifesaving, and endlessly gratifying journey with what would quickly become (by April 2020) the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.
This April marks the third anniversary of the founding of the FLCCC. Today, I see an organization that has matured from a fledgling group of ten souls hell-bent on saving lives in April of 2020 to become, in 2023, a global, lifesaving, health-freedom-fighting force. This happened despite being censored and defamed by many whose motives were sheer greed and power; or by those who just thought they knew better. They didn’t. Believe me. They didn’t.
The initial group of ten was comprised of eight esteemed doctors — Paul Marik, Pierre Kory, G. Umberto Meduri, Jose Iglesias, Joseph Varon, Keith Berkowitz, Fred Wagshul, and Howard Kornfeld— along with former CBS News Consumer Correspondent Betsy Ashton (recruited by her physician, Dr. Berkowitz) and myself. The docs came together organically, some having worked together previously. Many had worked with and/or were trained by Paul.
The FLCCC’s First Zoom Meeting
I spoke to Paul for the first time the day after the Facebook message arrived. We discussed ways to get this news out quickly to national audiences. I recall thinking to myself, “How hard can this be to get the news out that people don’t have to die from COVID?” I mean, you would think that the protocol developed by Dr. Marik, the world’s most highly published Critical Care physician, would be trusted by health authorities and medical providers around the world. After all, he was the nation’s “expert’s expert.” And isn’t that who you turn to in a global health emergency?
Dr. Marik and the FLCCC physicians huddled for hours — discussing and refining the protocol— which soon came to be known as the MATH+ Protocol — Methylprednisolone (a steroid), Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Thiamine, Heparin and several additional co-interventions. Even though Betsy and I dispatched nationally distributed press releases about the protocol (which was already saving nearly every critically ill COVID patient in Dr. Marik’s Norfolk, Virginia ICU), and followed up with calls to newsrooms, we came up with ZERO responses. The release was also conveyed to federal health agencies, health officials and numerous elected officials — including the White House where it was received via courier.
Crickets.
THE FLCCC’S FIRST PRESS RELEASE INCLUDED “THE PROTOCOL” (NOT YET NAMED) THAT WAS SAVING PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITALS WHERE IT WAS BEING USED
What the hell was going on here? Hospitals using the MATH+ protocol were experiencing mortality rates of 4-6%, compared with non-MATH+ hospitals that had mortality rates of anywhere from 18-80%.
I remember calling a CNN producer who told me that without a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), she could not proceed with scheduling an interview. “But this protocol was developed by the world’s most highly published Critical Care Medicine physician with decades of clinical experience,” I protested. “People are dying—and fast. This is a global medical emergency. Dr. Marik and many of the other FLCCC docs are saving most every critically ill COVID patient in their ICUs. Dr. Marik is the doctor you and the CDC, WHO, NIH and the FDA ought to be talking to!” “Sorry,” was all she said and hung up.
I think back now and shudder in sheer horror and anger at the thought of how many thousands of people could have been saved if at least ONE major American news outlet—print, digital or electronic—put their corporate directives aside, said “screw it”, and allowed our docs on the air with the lifesaving news.
THE FLCCC’s FIRST VIDEO
We all started to get it. And fast. We learned a few things right from the jump. First, in order to even get an audience with the media, you had to arrive with RCT in hand. No RCT, no audience. Second, it became obvious that there was already a hierarchy—an impermeable “structure”— that had been put in place (likely by the alphabet agencies in bed with the media and pharmaceutical companies) to manage what (and who) gets on the news; and what (and who) doesn’t. Fauci, Birx and company were in. Marik, Kory et al…yeah, not a chance.
So we watched this complete insanity with incredulity, while still sending out press releases and trying get a foothold on our newly established social media channels. We couldn’t shout loud enough to get any media attention. Meanwhile, America’s public health agencies sat on their hands and allowed people to perish needlessly waiting for a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) on steroids to be published to prove they worked.
In early May of 2020, Dr. Kory was invited by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson to testify before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the urgency of health agencies adopting and recommending the MATH+ protocol. Though the protocol was again walked over to the White House later that day, nothing came of it. They weren’t about to recommend it until they had an RCT in hand…the dying be damned.
In late June of 2020, the UK’s Oxford University published the results of its Recovery Trial, which showed that COVID was indeed a steroid responsive disease — contrary to the WHO’s warning NOT to use corticosteroids for critically ill patients. In fact, the Oxford researchers had to stop the trial early because too many of the control subjects were dying because they did not receive the steroid they needed to survive. But the WHO did not endorse steroids for COVID until September of 2020—leaving many more to die in the interim.
It was a vindication for us, but at a hefty price. It didn’t bring back those who never returned to their families—but could have. SHOULD have.
But on we fought. We had to. We wanted to. We needed to. Lives were still at stake.
In November of 2020, the ivermectin debacle began. That’s when Dr. Marik confirmed the data signal for ivermectin’s efficacy. The FLCCC issued press releases—telling the world of ivermectin’s ability to save millions and help bring the pandemic to a swift end. This time the CDC—and the equally complicit FDA, NIH and the WHO—responded to the FLCCC (and Dr. Kory’s bombshell second senate testimony in December) by participating in a well-coordinated government agency/media/Big Pharma/corporate interests campaign to censor us, mock us, defame us, and call for disciplinary measures to be taken against us — and any other healthcare provider who believed like us. They tried like hell to do whatever it took to withhold from its own citizens a lifesaving component of a multi-modal protocol that saved millions in the countries where it was being used. They called it “horse paste.” They lied. God, how they lied—for the vile love of money and power.
You see, the tiny, off-patent, inexpensive, globally available, organic drug was threatening the upcoming roll-out of the COVID vaccines. It had to be stopped, or trillions of dollars earmarked for the vaccine makers would swirl the drain. (If the government acknowledged the efficacy of ivermectin for COVID, then the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the vaccines could never have been issued.)
The campaign was relentless and vicious. Drs. Marik and Kory were excoriated. They each lost their livelihoods. Licenses and board certifications were threatened. Their scientific papers were accepted by medical journals…then summarily retracted after peer review and publication without documented evidence of fraud or plagiarism. They were derided and vilified as “quacks”, “fringe doctors”, and “snake-oil” salesmen—even though there were dozens of peer-reviewed RCTs showing the unparalleled efficacy of ivermectin. Soon, we learned of several ivermectin “studies” that were either “designed to fail”; or had their data and conclusions manipulated by authors—some former champions of ivermectin — who had been bought off. These “studies” only escalated the attacks on the FLCCC. Fewer medical providers were willing to prescribe ivermectin. Many pharmacies—intimidated by government demands that ivermectin not be dispensed to patients — refused to fill the prescriptions that did come in—placing their customers’ health in peril. (This policy is still in effect.)
We wept for patients. And we wept for our doctors. By this time our team had grown. We were a tight-knit mission-driven family in a COVID-plagued world that had gone stark-raving mad. We knew our docs had it right. But we were being muzzled. By Facebook. By Twitter. By YouTube. By Vimeo. By LinkedIn. By Medium. By PayPal. By news wire services who distribute press releases. More. The rigorous science and the epidemiological data showing countless lives saved by ivermectin attested to its efficacy. But many never heard about it.
All we could do was hold our doctors close and ask them to carry on. They did…these mighty medical warriors of extraordinary moral courage.
But the censorship and defamation machine wasn’t finished with us yet. The attacks on the FLCCC continue unabated to this day as our doctors have developed protocols for Long COVID patients and for those who are COVID-vaccine injured. We’ve been labeled “anti-vaxxers”. We are not. We are “anti-mRNA-vaccines-that-seriously-harm-or-cause-death-to-patients.” An abundance of scientific data and the CDC’s own record of COVID vaccine injuries and deaths irrefutably proves that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are not safe. But many look at the data — and inexplicably still walk away denying the data’s veracity…the jingle from the CDC’s TV ads promoting the vaccines and the boosters still skipping through their heads.
Since our founding three years ago (pretty much to the day) the FLCCC doctors have traveled throughout the United States and the world, giving lectures, speaking at conferences, symposia and health freedom rallies. They have testified in state legislatures advocating for an end to health mandates. While they write Op-Eds in newspapers, periodicals and on digital platforms, and appear as guests on webinars, podcasts and television programs, these are outlets that really represent only one side of the political spectrum.
How this pandemic ever became a polarizing, political hot potato is way beyond me. This was a pandemic. We were all in it together. We just needed our health agencies to consult and listen to the experts, which, for the most part, they did not do. Instead, they pieced together some kind of “Pandemic 101” playbook and told everyone to get out of their way.
Massive fail.
By August of 2022. over one million Americans were dead and over six and a half millions perished worldwide—with hundreds of thousands of others experiencing symptoms of long COVID or vaccine injury. Two and half years after Dr. Marik and the FLCCC handed the world the way to save millions—the CDC announced a restructuring of the agency and admitted to systemic policy failures throughout the pandemic.
The CDC noted that their flawed policies included a misguided focus on the publishing of scientific studies (yes, the RCTs)—rather than urgent action…for which the FLCCC pleaded. They say they failed to act quickly…which Dr. Marik and Dr. Kory begged them to do. They said they should have recognized the value of public health efforts…which Dr. Marik, Dr. Kory and the FLCCC had proposed and delivered to them on a silver platter. They said they should have heeded the potentially lifesaving and immediately actionable information available to them in preprint studies and pre-peer reviewed medical papers. They did not. (Still, to this day, the CDC remains steadfast in their rejection of ivermectin as a COVID therapeutic, and they have offered no treatment guidance for Long COVID or COVID vaccine injury—which they do not recognize. There are no diagnosis codes for Long COVID and vaccine injury. Furthermore, the federal government has not formally recognized spike protein disease caused by COVID or vaccine injury.)
Nevertheless, I look at the enormous global and humanitarian impacts of of the FLCCC since its founding three years ago and my heart swells with pride and gratitude. The FLCCC has overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. Would we do it all again? You bet we would. Why? Because when millions of lives are imperiled, there is nothing else TO do but step up to save them if you are able. And the FLCCC is mightily able.
So we will keep on keeping on…with research and the development of protocols to help people with other diseases like diabetes, RSV, the flu, sepsis, cancer and more. We are only three years old—with a lifetime of saving lives and helping people live longer and better before us.
You know, in our earliest days, all of the expenses of the FLCCC were placed on Dr. Kory’s credit card. (Yep! His credit card!) But as we grew, and more people began to take notice of the lifesaving work we were doing, small donations began to trickle in. Now, I can joyfully report that we are supported by many incredible, compassionate and generous donors who recognize the formidable wind in our faces that tried to push us back at every turn. They have seen us tenaciously and courageously moving forward to save lives, help the injured and preserve health freedom. We have much, much more work to do; and thankfully, the amazing support of the FLCCC Community has caused the wind to shift. Now we feel it at our backs— growing stronger everyday—propelling us forward on what has become our shared journey to save every life we possibly can.
With sincere and profound thanks to these miracle workers everywhere,
Joyce
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A REMINDER THAT THE FLCCC ALLIANCE WAS FIRST…
…to recognize that COVID was a steroid-responsive disease
…to identify the respiratory pneumonia caused by COVID as “organizing pneumonia.”
…to identify COVID-19 as an airborne transmitted disease
…to show that cleansing the pharyngeal space with virucidals reduces the COVID-19 viral load.
…to report that anti-coagulation (blood thinners like Heparin) reduced the risk of clotting in COVID-19 patients
…to show that there was a powerful data signal from rapidly emerging studies across the world that ivermectin had the capacity to prevent and treat COVID-19.
