The Jenny Beth Show

Ivermectin in His Pocket: The Hospital Said No, He Went In Anyway | Dr. John Littell

Episode Summary

Ivermectin in his pocket, because the hospital pharmacy would not release it. Dr. John Littell, a board certified family physician in Ocala, Florida with more than thirty years in practice, tells Jenny Beth Martin what he saw inside the hospitals during COVID and what it cost him to say so. A new mother who had worked the COVID ward until the day of her c-section sat on the edge of her bed, blue, her oxygen at 80 percent and falling, her baby in the crib beside her. She was not his patient. He walked in with the three milligram tablets he carried for exactly that reason, treated her out of his own supply for close to forty-eight hours, and she went home with her baby in three days. The rest of the hour: respiratory therapists pulling him aside in hospital hallways to say patients were going on ventilators too quickly, what BiPAP did to lungs that had gone brittle, the early treatment protocol a small group of physicians built by comparing notes, the twelve doctors on a Zoom call who became the meeting in San Juan and then the Rome Declaration, and the years he spent labeled unprofessional, blackballed across two states, and reported to a medical board for practicing the medicine he believed in. Dr. John Littell is a board certified family physician, a former Army doctor, and the author of The Hidden Truth. More at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.

Episode Notes

Guest: Dr. John Littell is a board certified family physician in Ocala, Florida, in practice since 1990. He served seven years as an Army physician, including a 1992 deployment to Guantanamo Bay caring for Haitian refugees picked up at sea, and he later served as chief of staff of a Florida hospital system. During the pandemic he was one of a very small number of American physicians treating COVID patients with early, off-label therapy, and he organized the meeting in San Juan that produced the Rome Declaration and the COVID summits that followed. He is the author of The Hidden Truth.

Key topics:

Timestamped breakdown:

00:00:00 — Cold open: thirty years in family medicine

00:00:30 — Why he was born to be a family doctor

00:04:05 — The sacred bond between a patient and a physician

00:08:45 — Personalized health care, and what Obamacare did to the exam room

00:09:33 — 2021: doctors told they no longer needed to enter the COVID ward

00:10:43 — The Medicare annual wellness visit, demonstrated on a congressman

00:12:11 — Guantanamo Bay, 1992, and the only triage that compares

00:13:10 — The nurse he pulled out of the emergency room

00:13:47 — Lockstep: disciplined for walking a hallway without a mask

00:15:23 — The first fatality in Ocala, and the nurse refused a test

00:16:36 — Twelve doctors on a Zoom call, and the Last Supper behind one of them

00:17:51 — Jenny Beth Martin on Bannon, Simone Gold, and the white coat event

00:24:00 — The letter to the White House and how the doctor networks were built

00:27:24 — Respiratory therapists in the hallway: they are going on ventilators too fast

00:27:50 — What BiPAP did to lungs that had gone brittle

00:28:37 — What the hospitals were paid per COVID patient

00:29:45 — Inflammation, microthrombosis, and the treatment cocktail

00:31:20 — Delta hits, and the scramble to change the protocol

00:32:03 — Pharmacies, prescriptions, and public enemy number one

00:32:20 — Labor Day weekend 2020: the meeting in San Juan

00:34:00 — No one size fits all, and the tenets of the declaration

00:36:00 — Off label prescribing, quinine, and where ivermectin came from

00:40:28 — Puerto Rico to Rome, and roughly ten thousand signatures

00:41:47 — The first COVID summit at the World Equestrian Center

00:44:29 — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the calls about coming to Washington

00:46:15 — Two cities, six hospitals, and why he will not give up privileges

00:47:57 — Ivermectin in his pocket: the new mother who was turning blue

00:51:28 — The mayor who was duck hunting a week later

00:52:20 — His best friend, the priest, and the security alert

00:54:23 — This morning in the doctors' lounge

00:55:26 — The Giver, and who sees the red apple

00:56:04 — Jenny Beth Martin on her father the minister, and what COVID really cost

01:00:28 — The personal price: letters, a medical board, and an investigation

01:01:45 — Montana: labeled an impaired provider for being too zealous

01:02:53 — Hillsdale, Michigan, and being kicked off staff for making house calls

01:04:22 — Blackballed in two states, and the letters that got him to Florida

01:07:48 — Why he is an optimist about the next generation

01:08:30 — Closing

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