New Hampshire’s chief epidemiologist, Dr. Benjamin Chan, despite the best of intentions, is still a bureaucrat. And rumor has it his agency can chase Federal dollars with the best of them.
Related: Doctors … Encouraged by CDC to Claim Death by COVID-19
COVID is a cash cow, and there isn’t a government agency on earth that hasn’t convinced itself it can do more good with other people’s money than those who earned it, and NH DHHS is an agency that spends as well as any other. I’m not faulting anyone in particular for thinking that is true.
But when the best of intentions creates false-fear that might destroy business owners, jobs, and livelihoods, as a side-effect, well, we want to take a closer look at that.
Dr. Chan is the DHHS point man on the virus in New Hampshire and is reportedly the governor’s coronavirus Rasputin. Gov. Chris Sununu (or so we hear) relies heavily on his advice with regard to the statewide response. He’s the DHHS epidemiologist. That may sound like it makes sense. But most of this response has been based on models that were poorly built and generated inflated predictions that were grotesquely inaccurate. Reporting you could only get here, by the way. No one else in New Hampshire media would touch that.
I’m guessing, just guessing, that given recent events, the cowards in the NH media won’t touch this either.
As the chief epidemiologist at New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services, is Dr. Chan also promoting the use of the CDC’s reporting guidelines for COVID-19 infections and deaths?
As we reported two days ago, a doctor in Minnesota was interviewed about his concerns over the CDC guidance.
A Doctor who is also a state representative in Minnesota has let the COVID-19 Death Certificate Cat out of the bag. He says he has seven pages of guidance from the CDC. It suggests that any possible link to COVID-19 upon death should be documented as death by COVID-19.
Are the numbers we are hearing, which the other media can’t wait to share, and the political class is happy to milk to scare people into cowering in their homes, accurate?
In other words, are we being lied to, again?
We understand this virus can be lethal especially to the elderly. Most of our cases and deaths in New Hampshire seem to be appearing in nursing homes. And every loss is tragic. But not unusual during any other flu season, and New Hampshire’s population is older than most. But do these numbers warrant the continued response? And are the numbers even accurate?
Are death certificates in New Hampshire being filled out based on the CDC’s recommendation that even the weakest of connections to someone who might have been asymptomatic (tested positive) or had mild symptoms justify declaring a cause of death as COVID-19?
Are people who are dying with COVID-19 in Ne Hampshire being declared as having died from it?
There is a political motivation to make that happen. There is also some financial motivation to make it appear that way (as noted here). If doctors or their hospitals have a financial motivation to defer to a COVID-19 diagnosis or as a cause for death, how can we trust any reported results?
And New Hampshire has a storied history with Jackpot justice and chasing matters at the end of which they might find a fat federal check.
Does anyone care to know? Where are all those concerned Democrats on this possible fraud? During the push to pass Obamacare Democrats and the media repeatedly sold a narrative that doctors were pushing tests, diagnosis, and procedures to fatten the till, so to speak. They seem unusually silent after we learned that this is exactly what the CDC is suggesting with the Coronavirus.
I feel certain the political class will insist that’s not happening now or happening here. But it will be amusing to hear what they have to say, if they say anything at all.
Note: Made a few post-publication edits for clarity.