The government is lying about my wife's grandfather's death, and I bet they're lying about many more.
And here's the thing... we're talking about the government of the State of Oklahoma. Oklahoma. Far from the liberal, woke, left-wing bastion of agenda-driven government policy like New York, California, or Michigan.
Nevertheless, the State of Oklahoma insists that Jack Dake Sr. died of the coronavirus when he simply did not.
Jack Dake was born in 1930 Oklahoma. He survived the depression in the dust bowl. He served in the Korean War in the United States Army and fought in some of the toughest battles of that conflict.
Jack Dake was married for nearly sixty years and produced three children, seven grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren.
He has also been suffering from Alzheimer's for the past thirteen years. This year, the debilitating effects of that horrible disease finally got the better of Jack. He wanted to continue the fight and his body was willing, but his brain was not.
As is the case with the final stages of Alzheimer's, Jack's final weeks were disorienting, painful, tragic, and heartbreaking. His mind was no longer capable of instructing his body on how to ingest food or even drink water. The family knew this was coming, but no one is ever prepared for this sort of thing.
On May 6, after over a decade of fighting for his memory, his cognitive skills and his life, Jack Dake Sr. passed away.
That's when his family's fight began.
You see, Jack was in a special Long Term Care facility for Alzheimer's patients. And, like so many elderly Americans over the past several months, he contracted the COVID-19 virus in mid-April.
He was taken to a hospital to check on dehydration issues resulting from Alzheimer's when a routine COVID test showed a positive result. He had a slight fever and cough. He wasn't short of breath, and his pulse oximetry hovered about 97% while breathing room air. He never used supplemental oxygen. He was in the hospital for less than two hours.
All and all, he was quite strong, physically. Even up to his death, his body, his heart rate, his vital statistics were relatively strong for an 89-year-old man. The coronavirus never really hit him in any significant way.
Five days after the COVID test, a doctor observed that he had no signs of any coronavirus symptoms. Doctors wrote that he had no fever, no cough and no shortness of breath — "no other complaints or modifying factors," the doctor's record reads.
After weeks of not eating or drinking water due to the devastating final stages of Alzheimer's, Jack Dake finally succumbed, like so many elderly Americans, to Alzheimer's disease. It was seventeen days after the COVID-19 test results and two weeks since he had shown any coronavirus symptoms at all.
Coronavirus is listed as his cause of death. That's a lie.
"On the day he died, one of the people at the care facility said that his was a COVID-19 death, to which we immediately objected," my father-in-law, Jack Dake Jr., told The Oklahoman. "COVID-19 had nothing whatsoever to do with his death, nor was it an underlying cause. In fact, since he had already been through the symptoms, he was probably negative for the coronavirus and now had antibodies."
The nursing home staff told the family on April 30 that Jack Sr. was a "recovered COVID-19 case" according to state health guidelines since he had not shown any symptoms of the virus for several days.
So why would the government count this death as a COVID death?
Probably money. The CARES Act provides a hefty reimbursement to health care facilities for the treatment of COVID patients. Maybe a liberal definition of a COVID death helps funnel federal dollars to cash-strapped states. Maybe it's pure politics as mounting death tolls are believed to hurt President Trump.
Who knows?
Frankly, it doesn't matter. We deserve the truth. The Dake family deserves the truth.
Jack Dake wore the uniform of the US Army and fought in a war thousands of miles from Oklahoma. He lived a long life, raised his family, paid his taxes, and loved his country.
He suffered from Alzheimer's and fought it with the same tough, tenacious American grit he exhibited in every fight he engaged in over his nine remarkable decades.
He deserves more than to be written off as another statistic. His death should not be a weapon to be used in a petty political fight or a sneaky scheme to get federal funding.
Jack Dake Sr. did not die from COVID-19, but the government says he did.
How many more Jack Dake Sr.s are there?