Dr. Annie Bukacek is a board-certified internal medicine physician and sole proprietor of Hosanna Health Care in Kalispell, Montana. Practicing medicine for over 30 years, Dr. Bukacek received her medical degree from the University of Illinois in Chicago, completing 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. She is a member of the Montana Medical Association Legislative Committee, was voted Best Family Physician in Flathead County in 2012 and 2019, and is a member of the Flathead County Board of Health.
Dr. Bukacek is now sounding the alarm about manipulated Coronavirus death statistics and warning Montanans not to believe everything we read, hear and see from so-called health “experts” who have proven themselves as unforgivably unreliable shills since this pandemic began.
She asserts that based on how death certificates are being filled out, we can be certain the number of COVID-19 deaths are substantially lower than what we are being told by the hysterical talking heads in our corporate media. As the rise of authoritarian rule threatens our civil liberties and basic human rights, citizens everywhere are realizing that the manipulation of Coronavirus death statistics is the engine of opportunity for certain individuals, institutions and organizations who exploit catastrophe as a means for securing profit and power.
We’ve included a complete transcript of her address below.
The decision for unprecedented, government-mandated lockdowns has been based on the alleged death rate of COVID-19. Is this death rate based on truth?
I posted the following question on facebook yesterday: “Know anybody personally with baseline good health who has been hospitalized for COVID-19 alone, or allegedly died from COVID-19?”
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 350 comments and received dozens of “no” answers, if not scores. Last I counted, there were 3 or 4 who answered “yes” and said their case fit the criteria, and they gave me some details. But even those 3 or 4, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they were answering honestly to the best of their knowledge, does that mean that 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 for 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 30 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 data bank 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 is 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 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 a hospital? Because hospital staff has physical exam findings, labs, radiologic studies, et cetera, 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 infections, 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 inaccuracy 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 died 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 atherosclerosis or cardiovascular disease and that may be our best guess in a lot of these cases. But is it the truly the cause? Who knows. Only God in heaven knows.
So allow me to give a real world example.
One of my patients’ fathers died about 17 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 by the diseased 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 US 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 of 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
Let’s combine the information I’ve give 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 – a 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 24th, 2020 National Vital Statistics System Memo states:
“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 US memo from yesterday states the death numbers are “preliminary and have not been confirmed”. That’s from the CDC website.
Here’s a quote even more laden with meaning. Steven Schwartz, national director of the Division of Vital Statistics says an 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 guess work. 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 EMT’s, 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 in sputum cultures, and 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 data bank 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 person died with COVID-19, not from COVID-19. Yet, the CDC guidelines 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 can 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. 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 fear mongers into relinquishing cherished freedoms.
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 of ‘figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure.’
Thank you.
Dave Cullen picks up where Dr. Bukacek leaves off:
Outer Limits Radio Show 