Doctor’s claims raise questions of accuracy, public safety

While a Kalispell physician is openly questioning stay-at-home and other restrictions during the novel coronavirus outbreak in the state, some of her claims don’t appear to be factually accurate.

Answering questions via email, Dr. Ann Bukacek claims that the current stay-at-home order is too restrictive “from both a constitutional and medical basis.”

“I believe that the Constitution is second only to God as a legal authority. Furthermore, I have special concern about what I see as an egregious violation of the First Amendment. That has to stop and NOW,” she wrote.

From a medical perspective, she said she worried about an increase in suicides and domestic violence. She said she also worried about people in nursing homes.

“The elderly in nursing and assisted living facilities whose mental and physical health would be negatively affected by solitary confinement which is usually only forced upon prisoners for bad behavior,” she claimed.

But the Hungry Horse News spoke to folks in a local assisted living center on Thursday. While they can’t have direct contact with visitors, they have been able to go outside and talk to people. They also talk to fellow residents, evidenced in a video the newspaper shot of two neighbors chatting with each other outside.

They aren’t in solitary confinement.

Even veterans at the Montana Veterans Home that are able are to, are allowed to go outside, with proper precautions, such as wearing a mask in case they come in contact with someone from outside.

Bukacek is also on the Flathead City County Health Board, though she claimed her views are independent of the board.

But on Thursday, she aired her views at the health board meeting.

Fellow board member Tamalee St. James Robinson and others referred to recent events in Toole County where residents and staff of an assisted-living facility in Shelby tested positive for coronavirus.

Four of Montana’s seven COVID-related deaths have come from the county.

In response to Bukacek wanting to reopen long-term and assisted care facilities to family members, Flathead County Commissioner Phil Mitchell said, “hell no.”

“Look what happened in Shelby. Someone brought the virus into that facility and now people are dead,” said Mitchell, who added he believes Bukacek has “overstepped her boundaries” and that he is “disappointed in what she has done with her platform as a board member.”

But in the email to the Hungry Horse News, she claimed that other facilities should reopen as well.

“First and now, places of worship, restaurants who can maintain proper social distance and businesses that are not considered vital but can continue to produce in a safe manner,” should reopen, she wrote.

But there have been instances nationwide where church gatherings caused an outbreak of the disease.

For example, according to the Courier-Journal in Kentucky, a church revival service infected 28 people with COVID-19 and two of them died. In Washington state, a choir convened during the early onset of the disease there. Dozens of members got ill and two people died as well.

Bukacek first caused a stir last week when she made a case in a April 6 YouTube video hosted by the Liberty Fellowship Church, what she claimed were inaccuracies in the reporting of COVID-19 deaths.

Liberty Fellowship Church apparently held services Easter Day in apparent violation of Gov. Steve Bullock’s stay-at-home order.

She claims that the Centers for Disease Control is asking doctors to guess on whether patients died of COVID-19, test or not.

“I’m sure you all so feel so reassured the government is asking doctors to provide their very best guesswork ... not,” she states in the video.

But in the email, she concedes that, “death numbers may be reasonably accurate but many of the listed causes probably are not the true reasons.”

She claims that CDC encourages in writing that medical facilities list COVID-19 as the reason for death whether testing was positive or not or even untested and when COVID-19 was present at death whether or not it was the actual cause.

But the death count may be an under count, not an over count, CDC officials noted in a recent Washington Post story, because widespread testing wasn’t available earlier on. Even today, states say they don’t have enough tests.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on a conference call with reporters on Friday said once again he’d like to have more testing at hand. He noted the state has 15 Abbott Laboratory machines that can make a test in just a few minutes.

But the state has only about 40 tests per machine.

“You’ll burn through 40 tests in one day,” he said.

Bukacek isn’t alone in her angst. Protests were held in Helena over the weekend over the stay-at-home order.

Bullock said he too, wants “things opened up as soon as we can.”

But he wants it done as safely as possible.

“We have to let science dictate this,” he said, which requires a thoughtful, and measured approach, he said.

Bukacek’s efforts simply undermine public health, claimed Cherilyn DeVries, of Love Lives Here, a Flathead Valley affiliate of the Montana Human Rights Network.

“The problem is we have a medical director putting out misinformation on covid-19,” DeVries said.

This story contains additional reporting from Kianna Gardner.