It was the summer of 2021 when COVID finally caught up to Nicole Riggs. The virus infected her family of four and both of her parents. As her mom and dad struggled to recover, Riggs encouraged them to go to the hospital.
“It’s a relief to have them in a place that’s safe and where they’re going to be taken care of,” Riggs remembered thinking at the time.
Her dad seemed to fare worse.
“We think he needs fluids, and once he goes to the hospital, he will get fluids and he’s going to bounce back. I don’t know anyone who has been in any longer than two or three days for something like that,” said Riggs, who soon regretted her decision.
“It happened pretty quick,” she recalled.
Her father, Ralph Marxen, 70, would never make it out of Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis.
“He wasn’t on any medications. He walked long distances every day,” Riggs explained.
He also refused the COVID-19 vaccine.
“He had two friends near his house, both of his friends got vaccinated and they both got vax injured. So, he was adamant that he was not going to get the vaccine,” Riggs said.
Time in the hospital
Riggs has spent more than a year pouring over her father’s medical paperwork with outside doctors. She believes the decision to not be vaccinated did not play a role in his death.
“This whole stack right here were all the drugs that were administered during that time,” she said, holding a large stack of papers. “It’s over 50 medications during that time.”
Riggs said she was told to make sure her dad wasn’t given remdesivir or put on a ventilator.
“I asked for Vitamin C, Vitamin D, we asked for Zinc. We asked for ivermectin, and we asked for hydroxychloroquine,” she said.
Riggs said her requests were all denied.
“When my dad got into the ICU, they were talking about getting him on a ventilator and he didn’t want to do that. The nurses’ notes say by that time he hadn’t slept in two days. He hadn’t eaten anything by mouth for five days. I felt like he got to the point where he literally had no choice. He had to make that decision alone and afraid, hungry and tired,” Riggs said, breaking down at the image.
“I don’t believe that he died of COVID. I believe that he died from the hospital protocols put in place by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and NIH (National Institutes of Health). If he had been treated like he had regular pneumonia, he would be fine. He would be here now,” Riggs said.
“It’s very unsettling to me that there are monetary incentives to put someone on a ventilator. There should be monetary incentive to not put someone on a ventilator so they will try everything to try to save them,” she added.
Hospital response
Alpha News reached out to Abbott Northwestern about what happened in Ralph Marxen’s case.
The hospital provided the following statement:
“Allina Health respects the privacy of its patients and is unable to comment on specific patient care. We have great confidence in the exceptional care our medical teams provide to our patients, which is administered according to evidence-based practices by our talented and compassionate care teams.”
Profiting from the pandemic?
Medical Justice MN is a group focused on “Preventing Pandemic Protocol Profiteering.”
Andy Barnhart, a Minnesota-based paramedic and attorney, helps lead the group and has heard from families across the state with similar stories.
“If you look at remdesivir, it is the only emergency-use authorized antiviral for COVID. It’s being administered to the exclusion of others,” Barnhart said. “There is documentation out there that these hospitals are getting compensation for each higher level of care on that protocol — remdesivir, ICU, ventilator and even death.”
“There is really a one-track protocol that a lot of these patients have been put on and there’s a financial incentive for hospitals to use those protocols to the exclusion of all others,” Barnhart added.
In the case of Nicole Riggs’ father, the final bill for his 16-day hospital stay in Minneapolis totaled $1.2 million.
Meanwhile, a wrongful death lawsuit against a California hospital spells out a reimbursement of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a similar stay following the same protocol.
“When I see that, I don’t love the idea of spending my time involved in this terrible tragedy, but I can’t just turn my back to this. I’m a lawyer. I guess I know why I’m a lawyer now and I need to be available to whatever degree I can because what’s happening is wrong,” Barnhart said.
“You can look at these lawsuits that have been filed and you can read the allegations that have been made. If it’s a conspiracy, why are these hospitals moving to dismiss based on immunity rather than allowing these cases through the court system where discovery can be had and where people can ask these questions that have to be answered under oath?” Barnhart said.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant. In my experience, if people are trying to gaslight anything you say and just dismiss it, there might be something there because if they know there’s not, why wouldn’t they let it get a full disclosure to the inquiries? That’s what we’re trying to do,” he added.
A national coalition known as the Former Feds Group Freedom Foundation has documented hundreds of cases calling COVID care into question.
“We don’t know if these hospitals will be held accountable. There is a lot of immunity that these hospitals have, but we can expose these dark deeds. We can do that through the courts and we can still at least bring to light what happened,” Barnhart said.
Texas doctor speaks out
A physician for nearly 40 years, Dr. Richard M. Fleming has been outspoken against COVID-19 hospital protocols. He says they are not supported by science.
“At no point has dehydration and starvation ever been used as treatment for anything,” he told Alpha News from his office in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Fleming doesn’t believe science supports the high use of remdesivir and ventilators.
“We have a lot of very good drug options, and when people are not succeeding, for protocols to say, ‘You can’t do anything else,’ that’s wrong. That’s just clearly wrong. So, did they save anybody? I don’t know, I guess 28.2%, but that means that 71.8% died. I’m not sure how you consider that success,” Dr. Fleming said.
Dr. Fleming doesn’t consider himself to be against ventilators, but he is when it comes to COVID.
He pointed to several major committees that wrote reports all within the last 20 years that advise not using ventilators for these types of cases.
“They literally said that if you have a patient who has fluid buildup in their lungs, which is one of the consequences of this disease, you have to give them half as much volume of air each time you breathe through the patient or you will cause more damage and you’ll kill the person. That’s exactly what we saw happen,” Dr. Fleming said.
Fleming authored the book, “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation.”
“It’s troubling to me that nobody’s questioning, or that very few people are questioning, the narrative. It’s also troubling to me that physicians aren’t saying, ‘Wait a minute, we’re the doctors, not the hospital administrators, not triple letter agencies from the federal government,’” he said.
“There is going to come a time that people are going to have to be held accountable for what’s happened. We have an emergency in the United States that exists because science and medicine were hijacked,” Dr. Fleming said.
Uphill legal battle
Attorney Marjorie Holsten, who represented Annie Quiner last year, said she has had hundreds of people reach out to her about the FDA’s protocols.
“There is a standard, I call it the Fauci standard, you can call it the FDA standard, where we will not give ivermectin, we will not give hydroxychloroquine, only remdesivir and that standard results in people dying. In Minnesota, if you’re going to bring a lawsuit to show either wrongful death or negligence, you have to show, OK, there was a standard, they deviated from the standard, the deviation caused the death. Well, there was no deviation from the standard, so no attorneys who litigate wrongful death are willing to touch this case,” Holsten explained.
The Riggs have rearranged their home for this unexpected chapter.
“We are preparing for my mom to move in,” Nicole Riggs explained.
“This is the new reality. If my dad weren’t gone, this wouldn’t be something we’d be doing,” she added.
Still, she is focused on fighting for others.
“I know there are some very good doctors and nurses, but I also think there are some doctors and nurses who are following some of these protocols knowing that this isn’t helping people,” Riggs said.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
