This will be long. Most of it is a transcription I made of a video, so if you want to watch the video itself, this post will be much shorter for you. The video is on the longer side, so some people prefer to read what is said rather than watch it.
I'm not terribly confident in myself, and if you don't know me well, dear reader, understand that anytime I sound like I'm bragging or being arrogant, I'm doing it tongue-in-cheek (meaning that I'm being sarcastic and making fun of myself, for those who don't understand the English idiom).
However, I study and read and learn all the time. Knowledge is my drug, and I've been reading and thinking and learning as much as I can about some specific areas of interest for years. I don't have a college degree, but I also don't feel that a lack of a degree makes me less intellectually worthy if I'm willing to put in time and effort to further my knowledge. This doesn't mean I think I'm The Authority in any of these areas, but I do feel like I'm more knowledgable than someone whose primary form of research is simply regurgitating sound bites from the MSM mixed with virtue signaling.
So it was with some trepidation that I posted something slightly controversial on Facebook yesterday about the reported numbers of Covid-19 deaths vs. actual numbers. I haven't posted anything even slightly controversial in a very long time, so I was nervous because I am terrible at debate, and I get very flustered in any situation of conflict, which interferes with my ability to think and answer rationally in order to make my points (it's a weakness I don't love about myself). I didn't say Covid-19 is a made up disease, and nor did I say that anyone who unquestioningly swallows the official stories is an idiot. I just want people to think. I want people to ask questions when there are obvious discrepancies in what we're being told versus what we're actually seeing. We've been gaslighted by the MSM for decades into not believing evidence right in front of us, into thinking that we're somehow so dumb that the people who parade around on news shows and speak like they know everything should do our thinking for us and that we don't have any responsibility to hold them accountable for the information they're giving us.
I just wanted people to take some comfort in the idea that Covid-19 isn't nearly as horrible as we're being told, that maybe the cure we're getting is worse than the disease. It was the only reason I would ever post anything on Facebook.
I posted the video below, and the first response I got was from an old friend--who is an intelligent woman--whose first line was, "I didn't watch the video (too long)..." and then proceeded to write a very long response about where she gets her information and that she'd looked up the uploader of the video (there are actually numerous channels and websites that have uploaded and/or mirrored the video) and was informed that it wasn't a credible website. She didn't even watch the video. She had no idea what was said, but she still felt she should correct the information within the video. Which she didn't watch.
Sigh.
So I'm going to take the time to transcribe the video because I feel the person speaking in it, her thirty (30!) years' experience in the medical field, and her thoughts on the subject AS A MEDICAL AUTHORITY are very valid and should be considered.
(I can't get either Safari or Chrome to let me embed the video, so HERE IS THE LINK to the YouTube video).
INTRODUCTION: Dr. Annie Bukacek is a board-certified internal medicine physician and sole proprietor of her medical practice in Kalispell [Montana, USA], named Hosannah Healthcare. She's been practicing medicine for over thirty years, most of those years in Montana.
She got her medical degree from the University of Illinois in Chicago, [and] did her internship and residency of internal medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University.
Dr. Annie is a council member and fellow of the American College of Physicians, Montana chapter, and in 2019 won the ACP Laureate Award for "commitment to excellence in medical care--as well as service--to their community and the ACP."
She is a member of the Montana Medical Association legislative committee. She was voted Best Family Physician in Flathead County [in] 2012 and 2019, and she is a member of the Flathead County Board of Health.
Dr. Annie has been a president of Montana Pro-Life Coalition since 2008 and is a member of the board of directors of the Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA). She is a mother of five and a grandmother of twelve.
[instructions to tech person]
Please welcome to the podium Dr. Annie Bukacek.
[Applause]
DR. ANNIE BUKACEK: Thank you! And thank you for the introduction.
At a time where telling the truth is considered a threat to national security, we're very blessed to have a pastor who tells us the truth. We are blessed beyond measure.
So, I'm going to read this so that I make sure I don't give excessive commentary. So, I'm going to talk about death certificates today.
The decision for unprecedented government-mandated lockdowns is based on the alleged death rate of Covid-19. Is this death rate based on truth?
I posted the following question on Facebook yesterday (this is the question): know anybody personally with baseline good health who has been hospitalized for Covid-19 alone or allegedly died from Covid-19? That was my question.
I asked the question this way because if you know someone personally, you may know their baseline health status and some details of the case. And being tested positive for Covid-19 does not mean you have "the disease."
Even asking the question this specifically, I still got some people saying their spouse knows a friend of a friend of a nephew in New York, and some who answered "yes" but didn't give the details even though I asked them, "Could you please submit some more details?"
I got over three hundred and fifty comments and received dozens of "no" answers--if not scores. Last I counted, there were three or four who answered "yes" and said their case fit the criteria, and they gave me some details. But even those three or four--giving them the benefit of the doubt that they were answering honestly, to the best of their knowledge--does that mean the person they described was actually stricken with Covid-19?
Inquiring minds want to know: are the reported deaths from Covid-19 truly deaths from Covid-19?
To address this question, we need to discuss death certificates, since death certificates are the basic source of information about mortality. The discussion of death certificates is not a fun one. We have all grieved so many losses in our lifetimes. Still, we need to talk about it because they are the basis of the so-called death rate of Covid-19. History-changing decisions are being made due to these figures despite the fact that they are flat-out wrong, based on data that is insufficient and often inaccurate.
Few people know how much individual power and leeway is given to the physician, coroner, or medical examiner signing the death certificate. How do I know this? I've been filling out death certificates for over thirty years. More often than we want to admit, we don't know with certainty the cause of death when we fill out death certificates. That is just life. We are doctors, not God. Autopsies are rarely performed; and even when an autopsy is done, the actual cause of death is not always clear. Physicians make their best guesstimate and fill out the form. Then, that listed cause of death--whatever we list--is entered into a vital records databank to use for statistical analysis, which then gives out inaccurate numbers, as you can imagine.
Those inaccurate numbers then become accepted as factual information, even though much of it is false.
So, even before we heard of Covid-19, death certificates were based on assumptions and educated guesses that go unquestioned. When it comes to Covid-19, there's the additional data skewer that is--get this!--there is no universal definition of Covid-19 death. The Center for Disease Control, updated from yesterday, April 4th, still states that "mortality data includes both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of Covid-19." That's from their website. Translation: the CDC counts both true Covid-19 cases and speculative guesses of Covid-19 the same. They call it "death by Covid-19." They automatically overestimate the real death numbers by their own admission.
Prior to Covid-19, people were more likely to get an accurate cause of death written on their death certificate if they died in the hospital. Why more accurate when a patient dies in the hospital? Because hospital staff has physical exam findings, labs, radiologic studies, etc., to make a good, educated guess.
It is estimated that 60% of people die in the hospital, but even those in-hospital deaths, the cause of death is not always clear, especially in someone with multiple health conditions, each of which could cause the death. Clear-cut causes of death might include traumatic brain injury (say from a car accident), intractable seizures or asthma, sepsis from overwhelming infection, respiratory arrest from a COPD exacerbation, ruptured aneurysm, metastatic cancer, massive acute heart attack, stroke, or pulmonary embolism. I will talk more in a little bit about why accuracy in the cause of death has declined for hospital deaths with the introduction of Covid-19 testing.
There are also unclear causes of death in ambulances. That's a reality. An example would be someone with multiple deadly conditions who gets short of breath and dies before evaluation can be done. Was it the patient's underlying lung disease or heart disease that caused the shortness of breath that caused them to call the ambulance? Or was there a concomitant pneumonia or other problem? We don't know because the patient died before the incident could be evaluated.
So, an estimated 60% of people die in the hospital. As to the other 40%, it is estimated about 20% of people die at home and 20% in nursing homes in this country. The true cause of death in these situations usually remains unknown. The death certificate is filled out with the best educated guess. Unknown causes of death include elderly people or younger people with known heart disease who die peacefully in their sleep.
It is not acceptable to list "old age" as a cause of death, even though that may be more accurate than the cause of death we often list on the death certificate. We are allowed to state as a cause of death "atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease," and that may be our best guess in a lot of these cases. But is it truly the cause? Who knows? Only God in heaven knows. Amen?
So allow me to give a real-world example. One of my patients' fathers died about seventeen years ago. He was old and in the final days of terminal cancer. He also had heart disease, but was too old and too sick to get heart bypass surgery. As he got near the end of his life, he came down with what appeared to be pneumonia. As my patient, this man's son, stood by his father's sick bed at home, the man died. No one else was there. The mortician was called and removed the body at about two in the morning. The next day, the funeral home called and asked my patient, the son of this man, what time did he die, and what was the cause? The death certificate listed the man's son's best guess. The cause of death, made my the deceased man's son, was made official. He was cremated, so there was no second opinion. This man didn't even have any medical training that gave the diagnosis to the mortician. This happens all the time, especially in poor urban areas, casual country towns, and rural areas.
In the case of my patient's father, did an accurate cause of death matter? Not really. But today, when governments are making massive changes that affect our constitutional rights, and those changes are based on inaccurate statistics, it does matter.
There's a U.S. standard for death certificates that includes a line for "immediate cause of death," followed by two to three lines of "antecedent causes" giving rise to the immediate cause, then one to two lines "other significant conditions" contributing to the death but not causally related to the immediate cause. For an example, immediate cause of death: sepsis; antecedent cause: pneumococcal pneumonia; other significant conditions: COPD.
Okay, let's combine the information I've given you so far about the guesswork involved in filling out death certificates and apply it to Covid-19. The analysis that follows requires the presupposition that in today's medical climate, many--if not most--patients sick enough to be hospitalized will be checked for Covid-19. It also requires an understanding of what we know, at this point, that most people who test positive for Covid-19 have mild or no symptoms. Therefore, testing positive for Covid-19 does not mean a person is sick with it, or, if the person died, that they died from it. To drive this home, we need to understand how the CDC and National Vital Statistics system are instructing physicians to fill out death certificates related to Covid-19.
Brace yourselves and please pay attention, and let what I am about to tell you sink in.
The assumption of Covid-19 death could be made even without testing. Based on assumption alone, the death can be reported to the public as another Covid-19 casualty. The March 24, 2020, National Vital Statistics system memo states, and I quote, "The rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in Covid-19 being the underlying cause more often than not."
The CDC report of cases in the U.S. memo from yesterday [April 4, 2020], states the death numbers are "preliminary" (quoted) and have not been confirmed. So "the results are preliminary and have not been confirmed." It's from the CDC website.
Here's a quote even more laden with meaning. Stephen Schwartz, national director of the Division of Vital Statistics, says in answer to the question as stated in the organization's Covid-19 alert "Should Covid-19 be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?" Check out his answer (and I quote from this memo, of which I have a copy): "Covid-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused--or is assumed to have caused or contributed to--death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc."
I'm sure you all feel so reassured the government is asking doctors to provide their very best guesswork. Not.
Fact: "Covid-19-caused death" and "assumed death by Covid-19" are not the same thing; and for those who died from something else and had an incidental finding of Covid-19 positivity, dying with Covid-19 is not the same as dying from Covid-19.
I'm almost done, but want to clarify the process with another patient example. This is something that could happen commonly. It's not a specific patient I'm thinking of. Let's say it's a sick patient who goes into respiratory arrest at home. He is intubated at home by EMTs--they put a tube down his throat to help him breathe. He's taken to the hospital by ambulance, put on a ventilator in the ICU, put on antibiotics for presumed sepsis, given IV fluids because his blood pressure has bottomed out. The bacteria Pneumococcus is found in the blood and sputum cultures, pneumonia is seen on the chest x-ray. Despite the staff's best efforts, he dies two days after admission. (Like I said, this is not an uncommon scenario.) The patient was found to be Covid-19 positive, and the doctor has the option of listing on the death certificate that Covid-19 is the immediate or antecedent cause because the doctor theorizes that Covid-19 contributed. Either way, it goes into the databank as caused by Covid-19.
To reiterate, if a patient tests positive for Covid-19 and dies from another cause such as pneumococcal sepsis, it may be considered accurate to say that that person died with Covid-19 and not from Covid-19. Yet the CDC guidelines list is one more--they list this case as one more Covid-19 death, and they go to the next questionable death, they label that as Covid-19, and it goes on and on.
You could see how these statistics have been made to look really scary when it is so easy to add false numbers to the official database. Those false numbers are sanctioned by the CDC, as of their memo yesterday, April 4th [2020]. I have made physical copies of those memos in case more people start looking at their website and they decide it's too much truth for us.
I hope I was able to make my point: the real number of Covid-19 deaths are not what most people are told, and what they then think. How many people have actually died from Covid-19 is anyone's guess. Again, God only knows. But based on how death certificates are being filled out, you can be certain the number is substantially lower than what we are being told. Based on inaccurate, incomplete data, people are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms.
Thank you.
[Applause]
Oh, and I have a little p.s. I forgot about: you can't have a true case fatality rate without testing massive numbers of people, but that is another topic. What is that old saying? Something along the line, "Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure."
Thank you.
[Applause]
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