Documents and interviews with those knowledgeable about the death of the rancher tell a different story than the narrative put forth by New Mexico health officials.
When the cattleman arrived at the ER on the evening of September 2 with his wife, he was soon diagnosed as suffering from acute dehydration as well as being covid positive.
His daughter arrived at the hospital several hours later.
In an interview, she told of the surprise eightieth birthday party for her dad the weekend before, where eight of the eleven family members attending ended up with covid. Everyone seemed to have mild symptoms, she recalled.
With her dad in New Mexico and not feeling well, she suggested he be checked out. “My father was not very good at keeping himself hydrated,” she said, and at that point he didn’t seem to be drinking at all.
He arrived at the hospital dehydrated to the point that his kidneys had become damaged, doctors told the family. Lacking a proper dialysis machine at the Lincoln County Medical Center, the family was told that they were trying to locate another hospital to send him to. Unfortunately, he never made it out of Ruidoso, dying on September 3.
But what happened while his wife and daughter anxiously waited outside the ICU, soon after being informed that the Texan was likely going to pass away, struck them as most peculiar.
His daughter recalled a “very puzzling” phone call her mother received—so disturbing, in fact, that she felt like “yanking the phone from her.”
An unknown man was on the line asking if her father took ivermectin. It was the only time she remembers that particular drug being discussed in the hospital. “I feel like they were pushing her. It was really irritating,” she said, adding, “it was not a doctor or nurse, but mom cannot remember who it was or what they represented.”
They were most interested, she recalled, in grilling her mother about her dad’s use of Ivomec.
At the very next press briefing, Dr. Scrase announced that a “reliable source” reported the state’s “first death” from someone who took ivermectin. While he hedged his bets about the role of ivermectin—and mentioned delayed care—he nonetheless repeatedly characterized the man’s death and one other as specifically being caused by ivermectin.
However, the cattleman’s death certificate, filed at the end of September, says otherwise. It stated he passed away from “natural” causes. His death was not listed as requiring any type of “pending investigation,” and the medical examiner’s office confirmed the fact that no autopsy or toxicology report was done.
But Dr. Scrase’s original tale proved to be very popular with the media. USA Today liked it so much the paper released several versions. “Two die of ivermectin poisoning,” it announced the same day the death certificate was officiated. Five days after that, a headline in The Hill trumpeted, “New Mexico reports two deaths from ivermectin.”
The New Mexico Department of Health has yet to respond to any questions about why a straightforward correction was not made to the media early on regarding the two deaths that were erroneously attributed to ivermectin. It is also not clear why at a recent press briefing the agency was continuing to perpetuate this fallacy even after admitting it was untruthful, rather than correcting the record—and why they have alleged another ivermectin-related death, again without offering any evidence to that effect.
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