The Minnesota doctor who recently criticized a document from the Centers for Disease Control on how to count those killed by COVID-19 told the “Todd Starnes Radio Show” Thursday that he sees a troubling trend in the politicization of the virus.
Dr. Scott Jensen, who is also a state senator, said the department wants doctors to list COVID-19 as the official cause of death for patients who have not officially been tested for the disease. These patients may have died of, say, pneumonia and were in contact at some point with a person with coronavirus.
He told Todd Starnes, the host, that these death certificates are sacred and “supposed to represent the truth,” not just an educated assumption. He said death certificates are important documents that will affect how future generations in families are treated for potential illnesses.
Jensen has said in the past that he is concerned about any effort that hopes to “jazz up” the fear factor when dealing with a health crisis.
He told Starnes that he has been in politics for four years and learned the standard practice of crisis management: First you scare the people; then you find someone to blame; then you scare the people some more.
“The groupthink is pervasive,” he said. “When you’re in a situation like this, they want you to be in a state of fear.”
The state guidelines reportedly directed him to the CDC website, which read, “In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID cannot be made but is suspected or likely (e.g. the circumstances are compelling with a reasonable degree of certainty) it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.'”
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Jensen told Fox News Wednesday night that under the guidelines, a patient who died after getting hit by a bus and later tested positive for coronavirus would be listed to have died from the virus, regardless of how badly injured he was in the crash.
Jensen raised other concerns about the country’s response to the outbreak and reported how hospitals could take advantage of the Medicare payment system by possibly administering unnecessary treatments. He also said that the country may have overestimated the number of ventilators that were necessary.
“When this is all said and done, I would bet $1,000 that there will be ventilators that never get unwrapped,” he said.