Doctor and Senator Scott Jensen | How the Number of COVID-19 Deaths Are Being Inflated

Audio Transcription

Senator Scott Jensen :
I can say this, that when a Minnesota kid wakes up in the morning, if they’re wondering what their chances of dying of COVID-19, they have ten times the chance of dying of an accident that day.

Speaker 2:
Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. (singing)

Speaker 3:
Yes! Yes! Yes, Thrive Nation! We are in the air everywhere. On today’s show, we’ve tricked a man to be on today’s show. This man, he’s a doctor, he’s a senator, and he thinks that this is a high quality show. Throughout the years, we have been able to also track Wolfgang Puck and John Maxwell and the co-founder of Netflix and Square to be on the show, but today’s guest is sort of a big deal.

Speaker 4:
I mean-

Speaker 3:
Typically, we only get …

Speaker 4:
He’s a poster child for Fox News.

Speaker 3:
He’s been on Fox News …

Speaker 4:
[crosstalk 00:01:21].

Speaker 3:
He’s been sharing the truth.

Speaker 4:
He’s kind of a hot potato right now.

Speaker 3:
Doctor and Senator Senator Scott Jensen Jensen. Welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

Senator Scott Jensen :
Good. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3:
Okay. I want to talk about COVID-19 case inflation all across the nation, because I think it’s going to change the national conversation. I really do. Tell us how the number of COVID-19 cases are being inflated.

Senator Scott Jensen :
I think we have to look at both sides of it. First off, if we’re going to look at the cases and not deaths, I think it’s fair to say that for every laboratory confirmed case, we know that there’s another group of people out there that have it but haven’t been laboratory confirmed for whatever reason. Sometimes the testing, they reveal false negatives. I think some studies have indicated that for every laboratory confirmed case, we might have another ten that are not confirmed that are out there. That’s what brings the case fatality rate down so much. The reason that’s critically important is because the case fatality rate is what informs so many public policy decisions.

Senator Scott Jensen :
Now where it gets sticky and muddy is when we talk about an inflation of COVID-19 death count because that’s where the big ticket item is. That’s where you’ve got various states saying, “We’re the ones who are bearing the brunt of this pandemic. Rather than letting every state get a predetermined allocation of federal dollars, we should get more.” We saw that happen with New York state and New Jersey where, after they had gotten hit so hard in April, May, they were making it clear that they thought that those two states, because they had born so much of burden of the COVID-19, they should be getting a larger allocation. Because if you looked at how many dollars they were receiving per COVID-19 case, they were getting about $12,000 per case. In Minnesota, we were getting about $300,000 per case because we were having so few COVID-19.

Senator Scott Jensen :
I think we’ve seen around the nation states like Pennsylvania reducing their COVID-19 cases by 200, because the coroners pushed back and said, “These aren’t COVID-19 deaths.” Colorado, the same thing. Kentucky, the same thing. Texas, the same thing. We saw New York go the other way where New York said, “Well, we’ve had a larger number of deaths during this timeframe than we’ve had in the previous three years. Therefore, that difference must have been due to COVID-19 cases that wasn’t picked up.” They moved 3,700 people into their COVID-19 death count in one day, increasing the number from …

Speaker 3:
One day.

Senator Scott Jensen :
… from 7,000 to 10,700.

Speaker 3:
Folks, listen to what Senator Senator Scott Jensen Jensen just said. I’m going to play back for you the audio of what he just said. Think about the profundity of what he just said.

Senator Scott Jensen :
It wasn’t picked up. They moved 3,700 people into their COVID-19 death count in one day.

Speaker 3:
Let me slow it down so you can hear the profound.

Senator Scott Jensen :
That wasn’t picked up. They moved 3,700 people into their COVID-19 death count in one day.

Speaker 3:
Wow. It’s interesting when you have doctors who get involved in politics. One, I don’t know why you’d make that poor life choice, but I’m glad you did. Doctor and Senator Rand Paul publicly came out and said, “Hey, I had COVID-19. I had the coronavirus.” He said that he survived it. See, he’s alive, so we know he did.

Speaker 4:
Apparently.

Speaker 3:
He said, though, he came out and said that the facts now show that kids are more likely, the kids have a one in a million chance of dying from COVID-19, that kids have a one in a million chance of dying from COVID-19. Is that accurate, sir? Is this not accurate, that that’s how deadly the COVID-19 virus is for kids?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I couldn’t speak to one in a million. I can see this, that when a Minnesota kid wakes up in the morning, if they’re wondering what their chances of dying of COVID-19, they have ten times the chance of dying of an accident that day.

Speaker 3:
Wow.

Senator Scott Jensen :
I figured that out statistically. They have ten times the likelihood of dying of an accident, whether it be a meteor hitting them in the back of the head or being in a car accident, but they have a greater than ten times chance of dying of something other than COVID-19.

Speaker 6:
You’re telling me there’s a chance.

Speaker 3:
We know for a fact that the number of COVID related deaths are being inflated. That’s a fact, sir. Is that correct?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I believe that to be the case in many states. I think in some states it may not be the case, but I think in many states we do have an inflation of COVID-19 death counts.

Speaker 3:
I have so much ground I want to cover with you, but if you could explain it to me on a third grade level because I’m not a doctor. How are you being coached, how are doctors being coached to falsely say that somebody died from COVID-19? Because I keep hearing stories about people that had an underlying condition, something else killed them, they had a heart attack, car accident, whatever, and then we keep being told through the media, you hear it on Fox, Newsmax, One America, that these situations keep happening. How are you as a physician being coached to falsely indicate that somebody died from COVID-19?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I don’t think we are being coached to falsely document a COVID-19 death when it hasn’t happened. What happened on April 3rd was I received a communication from the Minnesota Department of Health. It linked to a CDC document. What it did was it changed the flavor. I felt for the first time in my 35 years of completing death certificates that I was being coached, that I didn’t have to necessarily adhere to the same precise sequence of causation that I normally bring to the task of completing a death certificate.

Senator Scott Jensen :
Normally, what the CDC tells us to do is look at the initiating event and from there trace the steps that resulted in a patient’s demise. What this document that I received from the Department of Health said was, by the way, if you’re not sure, if you think it’s probable or you assume it to be the case or it’s reasonable, or COVID-19 contributed, you can go ahead and put it down as the cause of death. That was new. That was why I said, “This is not right.”

Speaker 3:
Right.

Senator Scott Jensen :
I raised it up the flag pole. I was on a news program a couple of days later. I was on with Laura Ingram at Fox News. This is where I got in trouble because I was accused of spreading misinformation, but the fact of the matter was I hadn’t been. I simply protested because I thought for the first time in my career I was being coached to not feel the obligation to be as precise as I’d been in my first 35 years of completing death certificates.

Speaker 3:
How much money, sir, does a hospital get if somebody dies with COVID-19?

Senator Scott Jensen :
If a patient goes, if a Medicare patient goes to the hospital and has a respiratory infection that’s not COVID-19, the hospital will get about $5,000. If they identify that it’s a COVID-19 respiratory infection, the hospital would get $13,000 approximately. If during the hospitalization a ventilator is used, it goes up to 39,000. That data has been fact checked by the USA Today and confirmed.

Speaker 3:
Now, Neil Ferguson, if we can remember, it seems so hard to even remember this, but Neil Ferguson initially came up with these models …

Senator Scott Jensen :
Yeah, good ole Neil.

Speaker 4:
Good ole Neil.

Speaker 3:
… that said 2.2 million Americans might die from COVID-19 and 500,000 citizens of the UK might die from COVID-19. Then they came out, there was kind of a retraction. Dr. Deborah Birx came out, the woman who wears the scarves, she came out and said that 2.2 million people weren’t going to die and that 500,000 British people weren’t going to die, but now they were adjusting that down …

Senator Scott Jensen :
Down to 20,000.

Speaker 3:
Yeah. It goes down to 20,000. From 500,000 predicted deaths, now down to 20,000, thus, meaning that the models were wrong by 25 times.

Dr. Birx:
I’m sure many of you saw the recent report out of the UK about them adjusting completely their needs. This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that said there would be 500,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They’ve adjusted that number in the UK to 20,000.

Speaker 3:
The math of that, and I’m not a doctor, sir, but that would be like me … Sir, how tall are you, doctor? How tall are you?

Senator Scott Jensen :
Six foot.

Speaker 3:
That would be like me telling my friends, “Guys, you wouldn’t believe, on the Thrive Time Show yesterday we interviewed this doctor. He’s kind of a big deal. He is actually a total of 150 feet tall.” I mean, that’s how bad that’s … It’s so off, these models that predicted that 2.2 million people might die were super off. But then we said that because 2.2 million people might die, we needed to do a temporary lockdown so that the hospital systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Now that we know that the models were off by 25 times, what justification is still being used to keep people locked down, these shelter in place orders? What justification is being used, sir?

Senator Scott Jensen :
They moved the goalpost.

Speaker 3:
Ah!

Senator Scott Jensen :
Initially, we were told that we needed to participate in a lockdown, social distancing, don’t touch your nose, your eyes, you mouth, because we needed, one, to delay the surge, depress the peak so that our healthcare facilities wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the number of sick people that would come into them. We have done that. We did depress the peak. We did delay the peak. We did equip our health care facilities. They just changed the goalposts.

Senator Scott Jensen :
We never said that we were going to try to squash the number of COVID-19 cases to zero. Why would when we know that 99.9% of people that get the disease will recover? The bottom line is the bureaucrats, politicians, and academics have changed the goalposts and said, “Now what we need to do is we need to absolutely stop this from happening because we have to wait for a vaccine to be developed.” That notion is not the best place to go because herd immunity is going to be a big part of the solution to this. We have no guarantee that we’re going to get a safe, effective vaccine.

Speaker 3:
Now, I believe that this is a great, positive thing that our listeners need to know. I think all of our listeners need to know, and feel free to argue with me, but, again, because you’re a doctor, but I believe we sincerely do have a cure or at least a treatment for COVID-19. I believe we have a cure for the fear. I believe that the treatment … We had Dr. Bartlett on the show. He was talking about a $230 treatment that involved the use of an FDA approved asthma medication, as well as a nebulizer. We’ve also had hydroxychloroquine studies that were … There’s all sorts of data coming out. Every time a doctor comes out and says, “Look, I’ve treated my patients, and none of them have died.” We just had this week, one of my clients, Marty, his family member was treated with hydroxychloroquine. They didn’t die.

Speaker 3:
Why are all of the doctors being censored every time they’re sharing about a successful treatment of COVID-19? Why is that happening, sir?

Senator Scott Jensen :
We’ve never practiced medicine by national discussion. That’s what we’re doing here. If you go back and look at the Legionnaires phenomenon in Philadelphia, we didn’t take on this discussion on a national level with Dr. Fauci having a press conference and saying this and this, and then Dr. Birx saying this. Then every physician, you stick a microphone in front of their face, they say something different. What we did was we looked at all of the potential, if you will, treatments and physicians talked with one another, they talked with their patients.

Senator Scott Jensen :
I mean, right now we know that we have the possibility that hydroxychloroquine might help some, Budesonide, as per Dr. Bartlett, could help some, dexamethazone could help some folks. We know that for some folks remdesivir might be able to help. We looked at Tamiflu. We’re going to continue to look at these things. Low flow oxygen versus the high powered ventilator. We need to be able to have these kinds of intellectual discussions. We need to let patients and physicians talk things through and decide, is this something you’d like to try? What we’ve done is it’s become such a political hot potato that we have physicians who are tearing into other physicians saying you don’t get to have that conversation with your patients because you aren’t as smart as I am on this given issue. We’ve just really muffed the whole thing.

Speaker 3:
Now, Dr. Fauci, Newsweek reported, and I’m citing all of this, but Newsweek reported … It’ll be on the show notes. Dr. Fauci funded the controversial Wuhan lab with millions of US dollars. That’s Newsweek reporting. That’s not tinfoilhat.com. That’s not rightwing.com. That’s not clayclark.com. We also know that on the Gates Foundation website, we know that Dr. Fauci has been working closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, where he is listed as a member of the leadership council, whatever that is. Do you see a conflict of interest there when Dr. Fauci is working closely with people like Bill Gates who are developing vaccines and he’s the one telling everybody that there is no acceptable treatment other than vaccines? Do you see a conflict of interest?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I think a conflict of interest for me is something that’s a pretty serious charge. I think I’d have to look at …

Speaker 3:
That’s fair.

Senator Scott Jensen :
… financial strings. I don’t know that Dr. Fauci has said that the only solution is going to be the vaccine. Certainly he has endorsed and pushed it, but if you go back to his comments in March, he made the comment that there’s never been a successful vaccine put together in less than 12 to 18 months. Do I think that Dr. Fauci could have used more discretion in some of his comments? Yes. Do I know if he’s going to financially benefit if the only answer ends up being a vaccine? No, I don’t.

Speaker 3:
Okay. How about this? The National Institute of Health recently fired 54 doctors, all at the same time, for failing to disclose their financial connections to the Chinese. Is that a potential conflict of interest that the National Institute of Health has scientists working for them that are failing to disclose their financial relationship with the Chinese? What you think about that?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I do think that’s a conflict of interest. I think transparency and full disclosure should take place. I have had concerns even as I look at Gilliad with its product, remdesivir, and then we see Gilliad having a real vested interest in hoping that hydroxychloroquine is not accepted as a treatment. Because if Gilliad’s remdesivir is the only potential treatment on the blocks, that’s great for Gilliad’s stock price. I think that we need to be very careful about that, especially when we start to look at the high-handed censorship that was going on last week when you had physicians who are using hydroxychloroquine simply coming forth trying to share their story, which did result in a contrarian narrative being put out on social media.

Speaker 3:
Gilliad, by the way, is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also in conjunction with George Soros. So George Soros, there we go. Dr. Z, we’re only going to have Doctor, Senator here for about 25 minutes. I wanted to get all my bad questions out of the way, because you’re a doctor. You’ll have smart questions now. You’re-

Speaker 4:
[crosstalk 00:16:44].

Speaker 3:
Feel free to ask him some real questions, now that I’ve thrown some pretty weak questions in there.

Speaker 4:
It’s exciting. I tell you what, when you have a patient … How much are you doctoring versus centering? What’s your life look like up there?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I’m a full time physician. I probably, in a given year, in terms of work units, I probably see or do about 150%. I probably do one and a half practices and then I’m in the legislature probably about I’m going to guess somewhere around maybe 700 to 1,000 hours a year.

Speaker 4:
Now, how many COVID patients have you personally treated?

Senator Scott Jensen :
25.

Speaker 4:
What is the treatment you’ve used or what have you sat down with your patients, and not obviously telling us any names … We don’t want to be inappropriate there. But what have you come up with? What’s your silver bullet? Have you found something that’s been working for you and your patients?

Senator Scott Jensen :
Basically, 40% of people that have COVID-19 won’t even know they had it. Another 40 or 50% will skate through it. I’ve treated it very much like I treat other respiratory viral illnesses, whether you’re looking at a rhino virus that causes a cold, or whether you’re looking at an influenza virus. It’s been fluids, keep your temp down, stuff like that.

Senator Scott Jensen :
If people start to have shortness of breath or a cough that’s compromising respiratory function, then we’ve sent him to the emergency room of the local hospitals. They’ve really taken over. Basically, in terms of me prescribing budesonide or dexamethazone or remdesivir or hydroxychloroquine, the only medicines I’ve used are steroid inhalers, which would include budesonide or comparable agents to dexamethazone.

Speaker 4:
You have done that. Of your patients that have gone to the emergency room, what are they doing there? What is your local emergency rooms doing for those patients? Do you know?

Senator Scott Jensen :
Most of the time they’re making an evaluation as to whether or not the patient needs to be admitted. If the patient is admitted, then they in that process decide whether or not the patient needs to be in the ICU. If the patient is in the ICU, and I’ve had a couple of patients transferred to hospitals where they could be put on ventilators if needed, I think that I’ve had probably two patients put on ventilators and they both recovered. I had one patient that was not put on a ventilator. He refused. He’s recovered. I think oftentimes it’s supportive care where people are being put on a bed on a medical floor and provided IV fluids, potentially IV antibiotics for a superimposed pneumonia, and close monitoring.

Speaker 3:
I have a final question that I would like to ask, and then Z can one up me here. Doctor, from what I’ve read about you, it appears as though you have a Judeo-Christian worldview. I don’t know. Is that accurate? Are you a Christian, sir?

Senator Scott Jensen :
Yeah, that’s accurate. I was in the seminary before I went into medicine.

Speaker 3:
Okay. I just want to make sure we’re getting this. I believe that faith and fear cannot coexist. I believe today we do have a cure for … We have treatments that work. People are recovering from COVID is what I’m saying. Kids aren’t at huge risk of this. We have a cure or treatments that seem to be effective. Then we also have, I believe we have a cure for the fear. I think we need to stop having alarmist statements being made by Dr. Fauci. If you want to disagree with me, it’s totally fine. I’m just saying, I feel like if you were the one doing those press conferences or Dr. Bartlett from Texas, Dr. Richard Bartlett, who used to be an advisor for Governor Perry, I feel like if you two were up there, we would have a different narrative as a country. Do you agree that if we had a different person sharing, doing their press briefings than Dr. Fauci we would have a different national perspective to what’s going on?

Senator Scott Jensen :
The question was, what do I think of Dr. Fauci’s contribution to the dialogue. I’m frustrated with it. I think you’re right. I think that there has been a fear-mongering that is doing nothing for us. If we had people out there saying, “What can I do to personally strengthen myself,” I’d say, “Vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc. We’ll look at some other things if we need to. Lose five pounds. Get active. Be exercising. For heaven sakes, be at peace.” We know the immune system doesn’t do as good a job when people are revved up with fear. So I think Dr. Fauci could have been a lot more measured.

Speaker 3:
Sir, I’ve been praying for you. I’m so honored we got a chance to talk to you because you’ve been taking a lot of heat for standing up for what’s right. It’s absolutely just a answer to a prayer that we’ve had you on the show. I hope all of our listeners pray for you as well. Is there a website people can go to learn more about you, sir?

Senator Scott Jensen :
If they just go to Facebook, Senator Senator Scott Jensen Jensen on Facebook, they can see my videos. I’m not really big into doing websites. I’m sort of naive when it comes to social media, but I’m learning quite a bit.

Speaker 4:
Yeah, no doubt you have.

Speaker 3:
Now, Dr. Z, final question and then we’ll let them get back to treating patients and helping get America reopened again.

Speaker 4:
From what you’ve seen, from what you’ve experienced, from your knowledge, and from everything you’ve learned up to this point, let’s say that some people that have talked about COVID-19 being the pandemic that’s going to end the world, we’ll call that a ten attitude, to guys like me that say, “It’s this year’s flu bug. Do flu maintenance like you do every year. Wash your hands. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t eat glass.”

Speaker 3:
Don’t lick flagpoles.

Speaker 4:
“Don’t run with scissors,” the same thing we say every year, and we’ll call that a zero, in other words, people … Where would you in your professional personal opinion …

Speaker 3:
On the fear-o-meter.

Speaker 4:
… place this virus on that spectrum?

Senator Scott Jensen :
I would put it as a five. I think it’s a clear, real disease. We know that there are vulnerable populations out there that it’s heartbreaking for those populations.

Speaker 4:
Yes.

Senator Scott Jensen :
But I think the fact that the population from zero to 40 is so virtually completely spared is extremely good news. I think we can get the kids back into school. When we get on the other side of this, I think we’re going to look to hold some people accountable and we’re going to see that there were a lot of oversteps, there were a lot of things that didn’t need to happen. I’d put it in at a five.

Speaker 4:
Well, I appreciate your honesty with that. That’s what we’ve been thinking. We think that it’s been way, way over done. Unfortunately, when it all shakes out, I have a feeling that if this wasn’t an election year, we probably wouldn’t have had quite the hysteria that we’ve had.

Speaker 3:
But if it wasn’t this crazy, we wouldn’t have been able to have this great man on the show.

Speaker 4:
That’s true!

Speaker 3:
Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 4:
That’s true.

Speaker 3:
We’ll be praying for you.

Senator Scott Jensen :
Thank you very much.

Speaker 4:
Take care. Well done.

Speaker 3:
Now, without any further ado, three, two, one, boom!