On April 14, New York City’s health department added more than 3,700 to the number of deaths in the city caused by Covid-19. The increase pushed the number of fatalities attributed to the disease by the city’s Health Department over the 10,000 plateau. It also boosted by 17 percent the national total of deaths caused by the disease, now upwards of 26,000.
New York City’s Health Department Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, said the added death figures were not explicitly linked to the virus and might not have occurred if the normal health care system had not been overwhelmed by current demands. The city is one of a small number of locations where deaths due to the virus are, according to the New York Times, “presumed but not confirmed.”
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The nation’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) figures for the 2018-2019 winter tell us that 35.5 million contracted influenza, 490,600 were hospitalized, and 34,200 died because of this single disease. That was last year, and there was no declaration of pandemic, no shutting down thousands of businesses, no people wearing masks and told to stay at home, no long lines of workers applying for unemployment insurance, and more. With fewer deaths this year, big government has arrived and it has become a very frightening development. We ask simply: Is the Covid-19 “pandemic” overblown?
Montana’s Doctor Ann Bukacek is a 30-year veteran of medical practice. The mother of five, she is a highly respected medical professional who operates a clinic in her state where she has practiced medicine for 30 years. She recently delivered some carefully worded skepticism about the coronavirus and the government’s response to it in a brief speech given to fellow Montanans.
Among the points made by Dr. Bukacek, she said that even if you are tested positive for COVID-19, “that doesn’t mean you have the disease.” She claims, “Someone who dies with the disease is not the same as someone who dies from the disease.” If the network news dispensers have ever made that critically important point, I expect I’m not alone in having missed it.
In her remarks, the veteran doctor called into question the conclusions placed on many death certificates after her experience in seeing that some contain less than carefully considered conclusions. She noted that the CDC has admitted that “cause of death” on official death certificates can be accurate or speculative, and assumption that Covid-19 is the cause of death “can be made without testing.” And she cited a procedural memo sent by CDC’s Steven Schwartz, National Director of the Division of center’s Vital Statistics division, who stated, “Covid-19 should be reported on the death certificates for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have been caused or contributed to death.” Dr. Bukacek believes that the cause of death placed on many death certificates is “pure guesswork.”
The reality, states Dr. Bukacek, is that “the real number of Covid-19 deaths is not what most people are told it is and what they then think it is. How many people actually die from Covid-19 is anyone’s guess.” She is very concerned about the massive changes in the United States that have been instituted over the lives and freedoms of the American people. Her conclusion: “Based on inaccurate, incomplete data, people are being terrorized by fear-mongers into relinquishing freedoms.”
The conclusions reached by this Montana doctor are both reasonable — and frightening. And hints are already being given that, even if the restrictions on freedom are soon relaxed, they will be reinstituted next fall. Only a well-informed public can apply the brakes on what is occurring.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.
