MOUNTAIN HOMEPennsylvania & the New York Finger Lakes The Drug that Cracked FREE as the wind Covid In this Bualo Hospital Room, a Grandmother Led the Global Fight for the Drug at Would Save Her Life and End the Pandemic By Michael Capuzzo 29th Blossburg Coal Festival Corning’s GlassFest Fusion Bakery 303 Goodness MAY 20211 e Story of the Cover Story By Michael Capuzzo hen my daughter Grace, a God. vice president at a New York Grace researched Ivermectin advertising agency, came and was surprised that it is not downW with COVID-19 recently, she FDA-approved as an anti-viral was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” to treat COVID-19, although in Times Square with homeless people it is FDA-approved as an anti- and quarantining travelers. e locks on parasitic agent. is would be an her room door were removed. Nurses “o-label use,” a routine thing prowled the halls to keep her in her room in medicine comprising some and wake her up every night to check her 20 percent of all prescriptions— vitals—not to treat her, because there is aspirin to prevent heart attack or no approved treatment for COVID-19; stroke, for instance, is “o label.” only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move is is called doctoring. And it was her to the hospital, where there is only routine until COVID-19, when a big a single eective approved treatment for pharma-dominated health system tried COVID-19, steroids that may keep the to eliminate all generic competition to lungs from failing. protect its biggest payday of all time. The absence of treatments for Judy had the choice to fight back COVID-19 is a global crisis, Dr. Francis or die. A worldwide revolution that will Collins, director of the National Institutes determine the future of medicine and who of Health, said recently on 60 Minutes, lives and dies from COVID-19—the battle COVID-19 for vaccines “are not enough.” Dangerous of Ivermectin—is ghting back, ghting for treatments variants sweep the globe after mutating life. Grace, I’m happy to say, was prescribed that are saving in the world’s poor and unvaccinated, Ivermectin and got better fast. the city’s sickest poor, lockdowns persist, and millions more are If you are interested in Ivermectin, black, Mexican, and immigrants, invited likely to die. The wonderous m-RNA check out www.ccc.net, and talk to your journalists from CNN, The Associated vaccines need a cop buddy. doctor. Here’s a help page on how to talk to Press, and Reuters to his COVID-19 Fortunately, I knew of an early your doctor: www.COVID19criticalcare. ICU to get out the news of his life-saving treatment for Grace. It’s a cheap generic com/guide-for-this-website. treatment, all the journalists ctionalized drug, safer than Tylenol, FDA-approved I got onto this story on Mother’s the story to make it seem like most everyone to treat scabies and lice in children and the Day, 2020, when my wife Teresa, who was dying when in fact most everyone was elderly, with many other uses that make many know as the publisher and editor of living. e happy story, the truth, didn’t t Ivermectin a “wonder drug.” In fty-ve Mountain Home, and I watched Dr. Kory the ocial government science. clinical trials with 445 scientists and 17,730 testify to the U.S. Senate about his group’s We live in a remarkable media age patients around the world, Ivermectin has first breakthrough, a steroid treatment where a positive story on CNN, perhaps e New been shown to be the most powerful drug that was saving 95 percent of COVID-19 more so than a peer review in England Journal of Medicine to eradicate COVID-19 in all stages of the patients when 80 percent were dying in New , will instantly disease, including prevention and early York City and the world was in panic. To encourage doctors in two hundred treatment. our surprise, as longtime journalists—we countries to use a perfectly safe and legal It’s what the world desperately needs met at e Philadelphia Inquirer—Dr. Kory drug and save humanity. I call on my fellow now, according to Dr. Pierre Kory, a former was cancelled by a global news blackout. colleagues, including former colleagues e Washington Post e professor at the University of Wisconsin, Was not a treatment that could save the and friends at and New York Times Madison medical school, whose research world news? , to open their hearts and group, the nonprot Frontline COVID-19 While Teresa puts out the magazine, minds to legitimate, unreported doctors Critical Care Alliance, has developed the I’ve written two New York Times-bestselling and therapies and write about all sides most eective non-vaccine treatments in the books, Close to Shore and The Murder of the Ivermectin story, like journalists world from safe, FDA-approved generics. Room, featuring some of the world’s most always have. It is a historic opportunity. ey have saved the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists. Now I’ve spent months For the rst time in the long journey from thousands of people, including eighty- interviewing Kory and his colleagues, and Gutenberg to Google, journalists may be year-old Judy Smentkiewicz of Buffalo, I’ve seen unthinkable things. When professor the ones to save the world. the star of this month’s cover story. Judy’s Joe Varon, a top critical care doctor and remarkable story is a “miracle,” her family Mexican-American hero recently honored says, thanks to Pierre Kory, science, and with “Joseph Varon Day” in Houston for his 5 The Drug That Cracked COVID From a Bualo Hospital Room, a Grandmother Led the Global Fight for the Drug at Would Save Her Life and End the Pandemic By Michael Capuzzo n the morning of December for twenty-ve, but now just immediate Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, and 18, 2020, as the newscaster family with “COVID shaping everything,” on New Year’s Eve Michael and Michelle announced a grim New York Michael said. Michael, fty-seven, hasn’t got a call from the hospital that their Orecord for COVID-19 deaths and the lived in Bualo for close to thirty years, mother was being admitted to the ICU. It weatherman predicted a white Christmas and relishes the trip home. all happened so fast. “We can’t be with her,” for Buffalo, Judy Smentkiewicz drove But now he was worried. Mom was Michael said. “We can’t hold her hand, home from a house cleaning job, excited sleeping twelve hours a day. She couldn’t we can’t sleep in the room with her.” He about the holiday. But her back hurt eat. She couldn’t lift the phone. “I’m started keeping notes to make sense of it bad, and she was unusually exhausted. “I ne, I’m just tired,” she kept saying. But all. “Hearing her voice crack on the phone thought it was my age, being eighty years Judy was always up with the sun. After as she agreed to go on the ventilator was old, working every day,” she said. “I never raising two children as a single mother, HEART-BREAKING,” he wrote. thought about COVID.” working thirty-five years as an office His mother was sedated and Judy’s small house in Cheektowaga, manager for Metropolitan Life Insurance unresponsive, as if she were in a coma, as just east of Bualo, was all set for Christmas. Company, she was still cleaning houses ve a ventilator mechanically breathed for her. Daughter Michelle, who lives a few miles mornings a week with her girlfriends to e doctors said there was little more they away and talks to her mother ve times a “keep busy.” On December 22, three days could do, and her chances of survival were day, put up the tree and the decorations before Christmas, Judy tested positive for bleak. Judy was getting the global standard and the snowman on the front lawn of COVID-19. of COVID-19 care recommended by the grandma’s house with her daughter until “We were devastated,” Michael World Health Organization, the National it looked like a scene from It’s a Wonderful said. e family Christmas Eve dinner Institutes of Health, and all major public Life. Son Michael came up from Florida was cancelled, Judy spent Christmas in health agencies. It was called “supportive with his wife Haley to help his sister cook quarantine in her house, four days after care.” Judy was told to stay at home since the family Christmas Eve dinner, usually Christmas she was taken by ambulance to See Pill on page 8 6 After the battle of her life: Judy Smentkiewicz back home with family dog Callie. Michael Kulbacki 7 Pill continued from page 6 for all stages of COVID-19. doctors and nurses and goodbyes and cries there was nothing the doctor could do for Even with the rollout of vaccines, they of loved ones echoing from a Zoom call, her anyway, it was best to keep patients are “not the whole answer,” Dr. Francis they turned blue and suocated to death. away from doctors and everyone else, until Collins, director of the NIH, said recently But as Judy lay dying in the small she had trouble breathing in week two. on 60 Minutes, with variants that threaten to hospital eight miles northeast of Bualo, at was the sign the disease had entered defeat vaccines in rich countries constantly almost six hundred miles south in Norfolk, its potentially fatal stage and it was time to sweeping the Earth after mutating in that Virginia, Dr.