State lawmakers call for audit of COVID-19 death certificates

December 19, 2020 in News by RBN Staff

source: alphanewsmn.com

In a “dangerous video” released Thursday, two state lawmakers called for a full audit of the death certificates for Minnesota’s 4,723 COVID-19 deaths.

“When people live in fear, they make irrational decisions and they look at the world through a different lens. Their life is based on fear instead of living their life to their full potential,” said state Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, who obtained some of the “raw files” of COVID-19 death certificates from the Minnesota Department of Health.

“That information is public data. Anybody can request that data,” she added, a point both she and Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Chaska, stressed repeatedly throughout their video.

“What Representative Franson has uncovered is not quibbling. We are not trying to be political. We are just trying to follow facts. These facts you got didn’t come from some secret treasure trove. This came from the Department of Health,” said Jensen, a practicing physician who was investigated by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice on two occasions this year after anonymous complaints were filed against him.

“I sort of got myself in hot water way back in April when I made the comment that I was, as a physician, being encouraged to do death certificates differently with COVID-19 than with other disease entities. For 17 years, the CDC document that guides us as physicians to do death certificates has stood but this year we were told, through the Department of Health and the CDC, that the rules were changing if COVID-19 was involved,” he continued.

According to the video, Jensen and Franson looked at 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that 800 of them did not have COVID-19 listed as the underlying cause of death, but were still counted as COVID-19 deaths. That means, Jensen said, that those 800 people may have died with COVID-19, but not of COVID-19.

“That would mean that we’ve had the number inflated by 40%,” said Jensen, who explained that the “key diagnosis on a death certificate is the UCOD,” which stands for underlying cause of death.

In one case, a person who was ejected from a vehicle and died was “counted as a COVID death” because the virus was in his system, Franson claimed.

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