Whistleblower nurse leaks internal hospital memo on huge increase in fetal demises
Registered Nurse Michelle Gershman has been working in the postpartum ward of a hospital in Fresno, California since November of 2020. As such, she began working with mothers and babies during the COVID pandemic period but prior to the vaccine roll-out, and was able to observe that things continued pretty much as normal on her ward during that time, and also for some time afterward, as the first targets of the vaccination campaign were older people. It was only later that pregnant women started getting vaccinated in number.
Over the months, Gershman noticed new issues cropping up. Issues that had previously been rare were becoming much more common. Expectant mothers were being admitted to the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure, for example. Their babies were delivered via Caesarian section in the hope that this would cause their blood pressure to drop – sometimes it didn’t. Mothers were in general receiving far more medication than in the past and being monitored far more frequently. More suffered from blood clots, and many from multiple clots that endangered their lives.
Meanwhile, many of the babies were also not faring well. Many more were born with what looked like bruising on their faces, Gershman describes. Many had breathing problems and had to be admitted to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). Many had apparent vascular problems and also had to undergo echocardiograms to diagnose suspected heart issues.
Gershman’s direct experience was limited to those babies who survived pregnancy and birth. Her indirect experience, however, provided her with an insider’s glimpse of what was happening in other parts of the hospital, and by mid-2022, she noticed a sinister development. More and more fetal demises were being listed on the board in the labor & delivery ward. Fetal demise, or stillbirth, is distinct from neonatal demise – it refers to the death of the baby in utero, after 20 weeks of pregnancy (before 20 weeks it is referred to as miscarriage).
Mothers were coming into hospital to have their babies, being hooked up to monitors, and having the news broken to them (if they didn’t know already) that their unborn children had died. Yet staff members were not discussing this, even though each instance was an individual tragedy and certainly traumatic for staff to deal with.
Prior to this period, fetal demises occurred once every two to three months according to Gershman, a figure which tallies with the size of the hospital she works and the national rate of fetal demise in the years leading up to the COVID era. But as 2022 progressed, the numbers were increasing until there was a fetal demise once a week – and then more.
On September 8, 2022, Gershman received an email from a department head. It was the first official recognition she had received of this phenomenon. Certain identifying details have been redacted.
Subject: demise handling
Good evening everyone,
Well, it seems as though the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue. There were 22 demises in August, which ties with the record number of demises in July 2022, and so far in September there have been 7 and it’s only the 8th day of the month. Now these statistics include XXXX so you haven’t seen all of them, and some have also gone through the XXXX but there have still been so many in our department. It’s a lot of work for you at the bedside XXXX and it’s also a lot of work for me. Demises have taken a lot of my time away from the other groups of patients that I serve, so I hope this trend doesn’t continue indefinitely. I know of a few more that are scheduled to deliver in the week ahead, so unfortunately, the process is going to be very familiar with all of you. Once again, I do so appreciate the time and attention that you give to the patients. When I follow up with them, they remember your names and the way you helped them get through a very difficult time.
We have recently had a few less than 20 week demises whose parents requested an autopsy. They can request an autopsy on these babies, however the baby still goes to XXXX examines every baby less than 20 weeks born without signs of life, but it is only an external exam. For an internal exam, which is what the autopsy is, you will need to have the parents sign an autopsy consent, so send it along with the baby to XXXX
To make this long story shorter, please follow the procedure in the fetal demise binder and do not let other departments tell you how to handle the specimens. The XXXX involved had been doing the right thing, but was told by several different people to just put the baby in a body bag, so she did. There are a couple of things that I want to reinforce.
- Babies that are going to pathology are always small enough to go in the large white buckets. I know that it feels disrespectful to many of you to pour a bottle of saline over the baby, so you can wrap the baby in a saline soaked chux if it feels better to you, but it must go in a bucket if it goes to pathology.
- Small babies going to the morgue can also be placed in a large white bucket with saline or a saline soaked chux.
- XXXX informed me that they are no longer allowed to carry specimens in large paper bags, so place the placenta (or large white) bucket in the large biohazard bag only. Why they are not allowed to transport things in a paper bag, I did not ask, but that is what I was told.
Thank you all so much!
Fresno CA
22 demises in August is clearly a massive increase from the one every two to three months that Gershman recalls from earlier times. But that isn’t even the total, as the department head notes: “you haven’t seen all of them, and some have also gone through the XXXX,” which could refer to the hospital emergency room and/or the operating theater. This number will also not include babies that are stillborn at home.
Despite the numbers, there is no evidence of any curiosity regarding the possible causes, which Gershman confirms was and continues to be the case. She happened to overhear a couple of nurses pondering whether “pesticides” or “something in the water” could be responsible for all the dead babies, something which left her “dumbfounded”.
Gershman adds that the mothers are no more curious than medical staff, surmising that they’re not connecting the dots due to their being “programmed to think that vaccines are good.”
Gershman’s own experience was echoed by the findings of Dr. James Thorp, an obstetrician with decades of experience in managing high-risk pregnancies. He notes that throughout his career, rates of stillbirth have declined to approximately half of what they were decades ago – that is, until 2021.
That's 2021, and not 2020, he stresses. Despite the fears instilled in parents that COVID-19 infection presents a profound danger to the unborn baby (and mother), there is no evidence of an uptick in fetal demises during 2020. In fact, rates actually went down somewhat, although the drop is not statistically significant.
Dr. Thorp notes that the increase in fetal demise reported by Nurse Gershman is larger than what he himself observes in the Midwest, but similar to figures in Canada that he knows of via colleagues. Official data from Canada on fetal death rates is no longer released, Trudeau having halted recording of fetal demises as soon as the shots were rolled out.
Dr. Thorp provides an added perspective by way of comparison with mothers injected with flu shots during pregnancy. The CDC first recommended flu shots during pregnancy in 1997; since then, the DTAP has also been introduced for pregnant women, and there are plans to add an RSV shot to the mix, with Pfizer’s candidate RSV vaccine now in Stage-3 trials amid a sharp increase in RSV cases in not just the young but the older, too.
In comparison with influenza-vaccine-injected mothers, those who have submitted to the COVID shots are vastly more likely to suffer from a variety of dangerous complications in pregnancy, including fetal demise, as a study co-authored by Dr. Thorp illustrates.
The obvious question is: Why?
Dr. Thorp notes that abnormalities in the placenta can be observed even in pregnant women who received COVID shots a year previously – that is, long before they conceived their babies. Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole who has been speaking out on the COVID shots for years, has lately begun to conduct examinations of placentas that had nourished unborn babies who subsequently died before birth.
Dr. Cole describes placentas he has been seeing as “the wrong size” for their gestational age, and as “calcified”. A calcified placenta before the last few weeks of pregnancy is a danger sign indicating placental aging and correlates with low birth weight and other health problems in the newborn. It is noteworthy that the placenta is a vascular organ and therefore is likely to be susceptible to the blood clots now widely associated with the COVID shots (and indeed with COVID infection itself).
Dr. Cole has conducted extensive studies of such blockages in veins found after the deaths of patients. He notes that they are unusual in that they seem to contain a proportion of amyloid (i.e. substance composed primarily of protein fibers) which makes it very hard for the body to break them down. Indeed, studies are increasingly noting that common anti-coagulant drugs are ineffective against such clots, leaving healthcare providers at a loss in dealing with them.
