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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,863 posts) Thu Apr 16, 2020, 08:51 PM Apr 2020

Anti-Vax Doctor Promotes Conspiracy Theory That Death Certificates Falsely Cite COVID-19

In the midst of an unprecedented global coronavirus pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, it can be hard to make sense of the destruction COVID-19 has wrought. In this context, the proliferation of conspiracy theories downplaying the dangers of the virus is sadly unsurprising, though disheartening and dangerous nonetheless.

One such theory making the rounds on social media is the idea that death certificates have been knowingly manipulated by medical examiners to inflate the number of COVID-19 deaths, part of a larger right-wing talking point that the government is using the pandemic as an excuse to infringe on American rights.

This theory has been propagated by everyone from conspiracy theorist David Icke (who is most notable for his endorsement of the idea that the world is controlled by a cabal of “reptilian elites,” or lizard people) to far-right figure Candace Owens, who tweeted on April 6th: “Turns out everyone is only dying of Coronavirus now. Gee. I wonder why,” linking to a New York Times op-ed about patients suffering from other ailments, such as heart attacks, appearing at hospitals in smaller numbers than usual. (Owens did not reference, as the New York Times piece does, the very simple explanation that people may simply be too scared of contracting the virus to present at ERs in the first place.)

One video that has been circulating on social media features a Montana physician named Dr. Annie Bukacek questioning the number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States (more than 26,000, as of Wednesday, April 15th).

Brandishing a stethoscope and white lab coat, she argues that the CDC is encouraging medical examiners to erroneously report COVID-19 as a cause of death in many cases, arguing that the actual cause of death in many cases may have been an underlying health condition. “Testing positive for COVID-19 does not mean a person is sick with it or, if the person died, that they died from it,” Bukacek says before concluding with a grand flourish, “based on inaccurate, incomplete data, people are being terrorized by fearmongers into relinquishing … freedoms.”