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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 387 | Don't Fall for Hantavirus Fearmongering | Guest: Dr. Mary Talley Bowden
00:55:42
Matt Kibbe sits down with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, author of "Dangerous Misinformation," to discuss how the public health establishment did everything in its power to prevent her and other doctors from effectively treating their patients for COVID-19.
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I've been there. I've done that too. May 19. Great. Thank you. Oh, God, I hope not. It doesn't, but Mary's fine. Yeah, and it's bowed in like bow tie. Now. Let me get my hair fixed here. Okay. I'm great. How are you? Comes out in one week. Comes out May 19. It's called Dangerous misinformation. The virus, the treatment, and the lies. And it's basically a tell all, a memoir of what I went through during the pandemic and hopefully a warning call to what could come next. Because as you said, this hantavirus, they're really trying to drum up what we went through during the COVID pandemic. I don't think they'll succeed though, because they tried this with monkeypox and they tried it with bird flu and that, you know, both of those went away. And I am certain this will go away as well. Yes. I'm at ear, nose and throat and sleep medicine specialist. I'm in Houston, Texas. I'm a solo physician trained at Stanford. I finished my training in 2003. After residency, I joined a private practice and worked for seven or eight years. I started having children. Children, and I ended up having four boys in five years. And so I took some time off from work and I wasn't even sure I was going to go back. But then I finally decided I would return to medicine. But I wanted to do it on my own terms. So I decided to do a different practice model where I don't contract with insurance companies, I don't contract with the government, I don't contract with hospitals. And basically it's called direct specialty care. It's basically pay for the service when you come. And that practice, I started it six months before the pandemic. But because my practice was modeled the way it was, it really allowed me to treat patients the way I saw fit during the pandemic. So that independence was crucial. When the pandemic hit. Yeah, when I started it, I got the. I weighed this opinion out. Should I do this to a forum, an Earth forum? And everybody thought I was out of my mind for trying to do it without taking insurance. But yeah, I was a solo physician. Solo physicians have no leveraging power with insurance companies, which means you just gotta crank out the volume to keep afloat. And I didn't want to do that. So I approached it with, yeah, I didn't need the money because, you know, my husband was providing. I just wanted to be a happy doctor. And so I took the risk. And I actually probably would make more money if I took insurance at this point, but I don't care. Like, I just want. I want a quality encounter with my patients. It's not rushed and it's very transparent because in the insurance model, it just used to drive me crazy. You know, as an ear, nose and throat doctor, we do this simple exam in the. In the office where we do an endoscopic view of the nose, and it takes an extra 10 minutes. You have to numb up the patient. You have to use a piece of equipment that your primary care doctor doesn't have. And so you do charge extra for it to the insurance companies, but half the time the patient would get some outrageous bill in the mail because we charged the insurance company for this and they wouldn't pay for it. It's really bread and butter part of the ear, nose and throat exam. It's hard to justify going to an ENT doctor without doing this exam in a lot of instances. So that just used to drive me crazy, and now it's just, if I need to do the exam, I do the exam. It's part of the visit. It's no extra charge, but it's just a lot easier. And I just like that. Transparency, Right? And for the people watching, there's a network of physicians that is growing in popularity and availability called direct primary care. And I'm not DPC or direct primary care, but it's basically like affordable concierge care. And the fees are generally the same that you might pay if you joined a gym, but you get much more access to your doctor and you get more time with your doctor. So I think that's the way to go. If you're looking to do something outside of the traditional model. It. No, definitely. I mean, 20 years ago, patients didn't have access to the information before the Internet. I mean, you'd have to have a textbook book to really know anything about medicine. And that has changed dramatically. I mean, I assume all. I'm surprised if I see a patient and they haven't done research beforehand. I'm actually surprised now, but it's got it. You know, it takes humility on part of the doctor to realize that they are not in control as much as they used to be. And that's part of the problem. It. Yeah, I kind of stumbled into the whole thing inadvertently. I remember when the pandemic came out thinking, oh, that's not going to affect me. I'm the small, quiet practice solo physician. It's pretty quiet. And I thought, you know, when you see things in the News, you think, oh, this won't affect me. But what happened was I was. I was using a lab called Microgen DX for my patients with chronic sinusitis. And they had a PCR test to check for bacterial and fungal infections of the sinuses. And they came out with a PCR saliva test for Covid, which was great because it was contact free. People didn't have to have stuff jammed up their nose. And we were able to get the results back the next day, which, you know, put us on the map, because early on, LabCorp was the only lab in town doing testing. And it was taking two weeks to get the results back. And people were quarantined, forced to quarantine until they got their results back. So because we had this rapid turnaround saliva test, people started just flocking to us. And initially, I didn't treat people. I would give them the results and tell them to go see their primary care doctor. But that, you know, as we saw the primary care doctors just close their doors and, you know, like firefighters running from the fire, they. They wouldn't treat the patients, and they would tell them to wait until you can't breathe and go to the hospital. And that didn't sit well with me. So initially I used, you know, common sense. I used breathing treatments. I treated for secondary infection with antibiotics. I used steroids. I did try hydroxychloroquine early on, and the Texas State Board of Pharmacy shut us down. They prohibited us from. From prescribing it for a time being. And then monoclonal antibodies came out, and those worked really well. And initially I could get as many doses as I wanted, and things were great. And then the government took away monoclonal antibodies. And so I started using Ivermectin. And I was. I remember I was nervous about it because the monoclonal antibodies worked so well, and ivermectin was already getting sort of a bad stigma to it. And so I, yeah, I was skeptical about it, but I really dug into the safety data, and once I was assured it was safe, then I started using it because I had nothing else to use after they took away the monoclonal antibodies. And ivermectin turned out worked great. So, I mean, all in all, I ended up treating over 6,000 COVID patients during the pandemic. I mean, I've never, never treated anything, any disease that much in my career. I had privileges at Houston Methodist Hospital, and they were the first in the country to mandate the shots. They did this on April 1, 2021, and that was actually five months before Biden. They basically paved the way for the rest of the country. And I was actually working with them. I had a good relationship. We were collaborating on research. But when I started, you know, because we were doing testing, I saw that the shots weren't working. And so I reached out to them and I said, hey, I'm seeing all these breakthrough. What's the deal? Are y' all seeing that? And I got gaslit. They said, well, we think it just lowers the severity. And then they went quiet on me. I had patients coming to me very distraught about the mandates. And so I just started speaking out on social media. And at the time, I really, I had zero following. I mean, I'd get like one, like maybe if I posted something. And I. On one day, though, I posted the same thing 25 times. I just said, vaccine mandates are wrong. And then I included a patient testimony, and that caught their attention. And the next thing I know, they suspended my privileges for spreading dangerous misinformation. And I found out through a reporter at the Houston Chronicle. So I got a text message telling me, basically asking me to confirm, is it true that Methodist suspended your privileges? And I just did a double take. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Then I go on the Internet and they're tweeting about it, and. And next thing I know, I've got CNN and NBC and Washington Post all going crazy on me. And so that's really what started it all. Just basically saying vaccine mandates are wrong on Twitter. I. You know, it would not surprise me if I was. I was kicked off of x for five months, and that was in 2022. I actually had my account restored on Christmas morning, 2022, after a five month ban. So I don't know. I haven't. No one's come to me saying your name's name was in there, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, the first thing I did after they came after me, I resigned and I held a press conference and I hired a lawyer and I sued them to try to get their financial information because I suspected, yeah, who's paying for this? What's going on? And unfortunately, I lost that legal battle. You know, they're a nonprofit. They're supposedly required to disclose financial information upon request, but they found a way around that. And they have something crazy like 22 different eins. So they have all these different entities that they're hiding their money in. So it would. It just. It's just untraceable. Right. So, yeah, that I strongly suspect that there's financial incentives. You know, Biden doled out $11.5 billion to different social media input influencers and church groups and sports groups. This is called the COVID 19 Community Corps. And it was actually launched the exact same day that Houston Methodists declared they were mandating the shot. Coincidence, Right? I mean, it had to be hand in hand. And I also think that Methodist was chosen. I think they purposely started mandates in Texas because they knew if they could get away with mandates in Texas, they could get away with them anywhere. And sure enough, we complied. We have a governor who is very tied in with the medical complex. He's in a wheelchair. And people who have chronic severe illnesses are often very tied into the system. Very loyal. So I can kind of get it. But I think he was pressured and coerced and succumbed to the pressure. And that explains how mandate started in Houston, Texas. And we are the largest medical center in the world. We bring in people from all over. So it dilutes the typical Texas independent values that you might think of health care. I have this theory that healthcare is slowly turning Texas blue for that reason. What's. Sam it. Yeah, I was an early proponent and user of monoclonal antibodies. I think we actually even participated in a trial, just not maybe 10 patients. It wasn't a big trial. And I found them incredibly effective and no safety issues. And people would say, yeah, I woke up the next morning, I felt tremendously better. And initially, we could get as many doses as we wanted. It was very easy. And then the government took over distribution, and they did this. If you look at the timing of how all that happened, I believe that they were taken away to get people to take the shot, because right after they took them away, they mandated the COVID shot. But, yeah, it's funny, I look back on my text messages, and one of the most frequent texts I had at that time was asking my nurses, do we have any monoclonal antibodies? Do we have any? Because the demand kept up. And also they took them away during the third and largest peak of the pandemic. So the fall of 2021 was when everything really hit the fan and patients were hospitalized at the highest rate that we'd had during the pandemic. Despite having the COVID shot. Right. The COVID shot had already come out and been out for eight, nine months. But it obviously wasn't working because we had this massive surge of patients at that time. And unfortunately, they took away the most effective treatment we had. Well, I think it was tied in with the COVID shot and trying to get a shot in everybody's arm. And they knew. People knew they could get the monoclonal antibodies and not have to worry about the shot. In fact, you weren't allowed to get the shot for three months after getting the monoclonal antibodies. And I think Desantis was just reacting to that in a positive way. I had friends telling me I should do the same, but they are prohibitively expensive to buy your own. But they're like, you should buy your own doses of these monoclonals. But I think he was reacting to that. The other thing that happened at this time is the FDA went after Ivermectin. This is late August 2021. They put out the horse tweet where you had the attractive healthcare worker nuzzling the horse and says, seriously, y', all, you're not a horse. You're not a cow. Stop it. And that tweet went viral, and, you know, became so much harder for me to prescribe Ivermectin to get access to my patients for Ivermectin. And that's right when they took away the monoclonal antibodies. And right after that, they mandated the shots. Yep. No. No. It's won a Nobel Prize in medicine. Like I said, I dug into the safety very deeply. I went to the FDA's website, and I found the toxicity data. So every drug that is approved by the fda, you can. You can research the toxicity data that they have to submit to the FDA to get approval. And one of the numbers that I looked at is called the LD50, or lethal dose 50. It literally means what amount of drug would kill 50% of lab animals, as it's a benchmark number we use to determine toxicity. And what I found was that the LD50 of ivermectin was hundreds of times higher than what we were prescribing then. I did a literature search, and I tried to find examples of accidental or intentional overdose with Ivermectin. I could not find a single study. I knew it was super safe. Yes. Five states, and it's not technically over the counter. It's still hard to access, unfortunately. But Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, and Tennessee. It looks like South Carolina will probably be the sixth state. The law basically says that a pharmacist can dispense it without a doctor's prescription, but unfortunately, we're having a hard time finding pharmacists willing to do that despite the new laws. Well, it. Yeah, I mean, it says the laws say they are Protected from liability. But for, you know, some reason, they're still very reluctant to do it. Well, there's no studies saying it would help. There are no studies saying it wouldn't help. But it does have multiple mechanisms of action of inhibiting this type of RNA virus. It also has multiple mechanisms of action for inhibiting the cytokine storm, which can cause so much damage after the viral infection, which happens in both the hantavirus and Covid. So we were using Ivermectin worked best the earlier you used it, but it still worked even in the late stages of the disease because it has these anti inflammatory properties. So my argument is if I had hantavirus, I would throw the kitchen sink at it. And one of the things I would throw at it is Ivermectin. The FDA and we sued them over that and actually won. And so basically they, and they had it on their website too, basically telling patients not to take it for Covid and telling doctors not to prescribe it for Covid. And they're not allowed to do that. So they're allowed to approve medications, but they're not allowed to, to direct patients on how to take them and they're not allowed to direct doctors on how to prescribe them. So we did sue them and they took down their misinformation from their website and from the Internet. But unfortunately, the stigma still stands with Ivermectin. And you know, if I were running the fda, I would put out a statement about the safety, trying to educate people about it and I would make it over the counter for the whole country because people are basically just buying it from the feed store or they're buying it from India and it's completely unnecessary. Yeah. I mean, is there just always. Every step of the way I thought I had a source that was reliable. And when I looked at the fine print, I realized that it was not up to snuff, it was not up to quality. So I'm now looking for a new source and I'm going to, I have to partner with a pharmacist. I think I've gotten that ironed out. But it's just, it's just one thing after another. It's a very inexpensive medicine. It should not be this complicated. Yeah, so I, you know, I checked the patients, my new patients in the, in the first two years after the rollout of these shots, 7% of my new patients were coming to see me with injuries from these shots. And these are people that were previously healthy. They get the shot and then all of A sudden these major issues develop. These are not, you know, these are not maybes. These are. There's no other explanation. You know, they get all sorts of tests to rule out other explanations and nothing comes up. And I've seen things like really severe rashes, recurrent hives. In fact, I saw a patient this morning who's had recurrent hives and she got her Pfizer shots and no other skin issues before. I've seen severe neurological problems. So, for example, I have a patient who's, I think, 55 years old. She got the shots in her right arm and her right arm has not stopped shaking for five years since that happened. And she can't fix it. I've seen people with tremors all over their body following the shots. I've seen people with pots, which is when your blood pressure and pulse just radically fluctuate for no reason at all. See a lot of people with brain fog and chronic fatigue who were previously healthy. Definitely seen people with heart problems after the shots. And then I think now we're going to have to worry about cancer. They've been sitting on cancer data since 2022, but they did come out with some recent data from 2023, which is very concerning, showing a market increase in cancer in patients under 50, which is our big concern. Well, I don't. Unless something has happened in the last 24 hours. I'm not aware of any new developments with HHS. But yeah, we have 4,551 peer review published studies. You can find those on React 19's website, all concerning harms of the COVID shots. We have at least 10 studies showing that the vials were contaminated with excess levels of DNA, which is just not allowed under normal circumstances. But for some reason, these shots are getting a pass. We have life insurance and disability data that showed a huge surge in working class Americans filing for disability in that third quarter, 2021, when the shots were coming out, when shots were mandated. We have more than enough evidence to pull these shots like any other shot. Any other medication would have been pulled a long time ago based on the data. I think the sticking point is Trump and I. You know, prior to Robert Kennedy coming into office as HHS secretary, he was fully on our side. In fact, I think I'm certain he rose to power because of what he spoke out against during COVID But now that he's in office, he's apparently not allowed to talk about it. Maha won't talk about it. The entire pandemic has been swept under the rug. It's. I. I woke up this morning and my feed was flooded with new updates on Han virus and it was super annoying. But when I went on Google Trends, it doesn't seem like, you know, the rest of the world, the general public, yeah, they were interested in hantavirus, but it's all of a sudden just dropped. The interest is dropping, which is good. I hope it continues that. It. Yeah, I didn't give the FDA a second thought until. Until the pandemic. It was just not on my radar. I trusted for the most part. I mean, there were some. I had seen some drugs come and go during my career, so. But under normal circumstances, the FDA would sweep in and, you know, when things started going wrong, they would generally do the right thing and take them off the market. This is nothing that we've seen before. And yeah, there's a revolving door between the government and these drug companies. So once they leave the government, they go to the drug companies and it's. It's a big, tangled mess. Exactly. And the media is complicit in it because the media depends on the advertising. Yeah, I'm still. I'm still in the thick of it. I'm still fighting the medical board. I'm still fighting Houston Methodist with Methodist. I sued them. I gave up on trying to get their financials, and so then I sued them for defamation and I lost that, but I lost on a technicality. And my lawyer had a stroke in the middle of the whole thing, and I think he just made an error because he was sick. And I ended up having to pay their legal fees. So I sent them a check for that, which was $166,000. And then they decided they wanted interest, but we had already negotiated that we wouldn't pay, that I wouldn't pay the interest because there were circumstances out of my control. The lawyer having a stroke and their lawyer disappearing. So we reached an agreement on that and they cashed my check. But then I tweeted something mean about. About them. And so they decided they're going to go after me for interest. So I'm still fighting that. And then with the medical board, there was during the. When things were going crazy in the fall of 2021, there was a patient trying to get Ivermectin who was in the hospital, and his. The hospital refused. This was Texas Hughley Hospital in Fort Worth. And they had tried everything and they were talking hospice, but they would not let him have Ivermectin. So the wife sued and asked me to testify and we won. The Lawsuit and the court ordered the hospital to give me emergency temporary privileges without delay. Well, they wouldn't do it. I submitted two full applications and they kept stalling. But the lawyer told me that we finally she's. They had to go back to the judge. And the lawyer came back and said, you're good, you can send the nurse. So I sent the nurse. She's greeted by the police. They don't let her in. She leaves. There's not a big scene. But they turned me in the medical board because they did not officially grant me privileges despite the. And I'm still fighting that. I'm fighting on principle. And then I'm also suing the medical board in a different case. I'm joined three other doctors because we're suing over free speech. We're suing six medical boards and then the umbrella agency, the Federation of state medical Boards because they sent out an edict in the fall of 2021 basically telling the medical boards to go after doctors for spreading mis, misinformation. So two of the doctors on my lawsuit have lost their licenses and I fortunately still have mine. But all of us were basically targeted for our free speech. Yeah, I mean the most expeditious way is to opt out of it as much as you can. You know, don't go to, I mean there's, there's going to be unavoidable encounters. Right. If you get in a car wreck and you get cancer or you know, but you know, for their day to day things. Don't, don't opt into that system. Stay out, stay out of that system. Find a doctor who's independent. Bigger picture, I think the federal level is super hard to fight. I think it's easier on the state level. I think there are eight states that are trying to ban mRNA, which I think if we keep fighting, we can eventually get there. And then if we can get one state on board, then we can see more states. But I'm still very passionate about pulling these shots off the market because yet 20% of healthcare providers are still pushing them on people. 7 million children have gotten these shots this year. Pregnant women are still getting them. And there's just zero upside to this. I mean, I can't even remember the last time I treated a COVID patient. I mean there's no mortal threat to us anymore at all with this virus. And people should not be undergoing this risk, particularly children and pregnant women should not be subjected to this risk from these shots. That has been my strategy from the get go. Be as loud as possible because I do think that's protective. Right. You either completely shut down or you hit it full force. And I do think more and more people are on board. We may not be aware of it, but you do see a general decline in patients getting these Covid shots. You do see an upper tick in lack of trust in the public health agencies. And I'm hoping. Yeah, we just. We just need to keep. The best thing we can do or the most thing that we have power over is educating other people about what's going on, because I don't think the government's going to help us. It. Yes. I mean, I suffer from that, too. I am reluctant to go get those screening tests that I'm due for. I just want to be away from that completely. There's a lot more information out there to educate yourself. I tell people, just take care of. There's so much in your power to take care of your health. I mean, managing your weight, getting enough sleep, exercising, eating healthy. I mean, those are. Those make so much more impact on your health than a doctor could ever do. So start with that. Step one. I think my favorite is when I was at Stanford and it's five years of residency, and I tell people it felt like a prison sentence because you have. You have no control over your free time. You have no control of when you can eat. It's really hard, and the hours are just massive. You're chronically tired. So it's the last. It was a day before my graduation, and one of my toughest attendings and attending is like our teacher, right? And he comes into the little residence office and he has his dog with him. His dog was with him at all times. His little golden retriever. And you know, the attendings rarely go into the residence office. It's like our little cave. And so when an attending comes in, it's a big deal. So it was memorable. And he was like, I want to give y' all some parting advice. And the first thing he said was, when you are out in private practice, try to find out who the best people are to refer other patients. Your refer your patients to you because you'll get judged on those experiences. If you send a patient to a bad doctor, it looks bad on you. But the second thing he said was really be careful about prescribing the latest drug to come out on the market. Don't be the first to prescribe it. Wait and give it time. And for some reason, that just stuck with me. And it ended up changing my life. Right. 20. Not for. It took 20 years but it. It changed my life in ways that I never imagined. And I recently reconnected with that doctor, and he's reading my book now, and I'm waiting for his reaction. I don't even know what happened to him during the pandemic, if he's on my side. But when I reached out to him, he was friendly. So I, you know, I think he's open minded to it. Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, there's so many red flags. And then they told us it only stays in your arm. I don't know if you've ever put a nicotine patch on your skin, but that goes all throughout your body. And that's not even an injection. Yeah, lots of red flags from. And that. That's the primary one. I actually, I remember, I looked at the study too, that they did because. And that. That was sort of the clinching point for me because the way they did their study didn't make sense to me. They. They would give people either the shot or the placebo, and then the investigator got to decide whether or not the patient should be tested for Covid. But in my opinion, they should have just. They should have just systematically checked the patients every week to see if they were testing positive. Because that's how we were treating. We were treating patients as you have Covid, even if you don't have symptoms. Right. That was the mantra. But they didn't test the product that way. They only tested the patient if the investigator thought it was worthy of testing them, which did not make sense. Yeah, I'm huge proponent of right to try. Yeah. I know that there's a contingency out there that thinks, or a group out there that thinks that we shouldn't pull the shots off the market, because that denies that right of try premise. But my counter to that is it's all potential harm and there's no benefit to it at all. And you just don't. You don't make those available to patients. And there is a. There's a right to try law in Texas, but it doesn't apply to drugs that are off being used off label. It's only for investigational drugs that haven't met full FDA approval. But. No, I know, I know. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I definitely believe in patient autonomy for. Especially in a situation where, I mean, it's like my patient in the hospital who was dying and they were talking hospice, but they won't let him try Ivermectin. That's just beyond absurd. Right. But it's. Yeah, I don't know, the. In terms of if you're, if you're. I don't know if your point was that we shouldn't take the shots off because that, that. Yeah. And cancer patients are not telling their oncologists that they're on Ivermectin. I can tell you. Because a lot of them will get berated or worse, fired by their doctor if they tell them they're taking Ivermectin. But I can guarantee you it's happening way more than the oncologist would like to admit or realize. Yeah, it definitely raises some ethical questions. I think technically you, you know, they are definitely getting away with it. There's been a sweeping uptick in pediatricians now refusing and kicking out patients who won't vaccinate their children the way the pediatrician wants them to do it. And I think legally they are allowed to do that, but ethically, you know, it destroys the premise of patient autonomy. And are these patients truly getting informed consent? I highly doubt it. Because when you go to the pediatrician's office, they're not telling you that. Okay, well, if something goes wrong, you have absolutely zero recourse because the pharmaceutical companies are protected from any kind of liability thanks to the 1986 Vaccine Protection Injury Act. Right. Patients are not made aware of that. There's no other recourse. Patients are not told that none of the vaccines were tested against a true saline placebo. So, you know, it's one thing if you give people informed consent with accurate information, and then maybe you choose not to engage with them because they're not taking advice, but when you're not even giving them informed consent and then you kick them out, that's just completely egregious. Yeah, we certainly. When I was going through training women during medical school and residency, that that whole thing was glossed over. We were basically told it's safe and effective, safe and effective. And there wasn't much more to it than that. And shame on me, I never questioned that. Now, I didn't give that. As an ear, nose and throat doctor, I wasn't giving out the vaccines. But I just, you know, I trusted the people that were teaching me. Unfortunately, Not yet. It's. You can pre order it on Amazon and you can. It's. The publisher is Post Hill Press, and if you order directly from them, I'm sure they would appreciate that. And then in terms of following me, I'm very active on X. And then I have a substack called Dangerous Misinformation. Also have a podcast that comes out usually once a week, which is on all the major, you know, YouTube and rumble and all that. Yes. So I'm a senior fellow with the Independent Medical Alliance. That's a great resource for finding like minded independent doctors. And then I'm on the board of directors of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. We have a campaign going trying to collect signatures to have that 1986 Vaccine Injury act repealed. There actually are two bills. There's one in the House and one in the Senate. On a federal level, Representative Paul Gosar from Arizona is authoring the one in the House. And then Senator Rand Paul is authoring the one in the Senate that would repeal the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act. So if you go to their website, you can sign your name to that petition. Thank you.