I’m finally sharing the all-cause death data I obtained from NYC Health + Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the agency which operates the city’s eleven public hospitals, including “epicenter of the epicenter” Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
Readers may recall I requested all-cause daily deaths in HHC’s eleven public hospitals, for 2017 through 2020. (See previous article for background.) The agency gave me the data for 2020 only, claiming that accessing the older data would require creating a new record, which Freedom of Information laws do not compel the agency to do. This was a non-sensical explanation, but without filing a lawsuit, there isn’t much I can do about it.
Getting the 2020 death data is better than getting nothing, of course, and useful in trying to resolve a related data discrepancy and in continuing to challenge official narrative about a sudden-spreading coronavirus catching the most disaster-prepared city in America off guard.
Daily Deaths in HHC Hospitals: 2020
The number of deaths occurring daily in the eleven HHC hospitals between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 (Figure 1) shows a catastrophic mass casualty event.
Prior to the federal government’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” announcement on March 16, 2020, the HHC hospitals were experiencing an average of 12 deaths per day (range: 7-23 deaths). The excess event began around March 20 and peaked at 166 deaths on April 8, with 14 consecutive days of triple-digit deaths (Figure 2). Excess deaths dissipated in mid-May and effectively disappeared for the rest of the year.
Comparing deaths in HHC hospitals that occurred 30 days before “15 Days to Slow the Spread” with deaths that occurred 30 deaths after the announcement gives a sense of purported speed and magnitude (Figure 3). Deaths tripled from baseline following the passage of the CARES Act, which provided numerous financial incentives for hospitals to designate existing and new patients as COVID patients.
The assertion is truly incredible: A hospital system that usually experiences 350-400 deaths in a month suddenly handled 2,753 deaths in the same number of days. Not only does a 700%+ increase with repeated days of mass casualties raise serious questions about body management, it is wholly inconsistent with even the most panicked “approved healthcare worker voices” coming out of New York City at the time.
Event Magnitude & Missing Data: Monthly View
A monthly view of the data further illustrates the audacity of the April 2020 event (Figure 4). Using 350 deaths/month gives a baseline of 1,050 deaths normally experienced by the HHC hospitals as a group in a three-month period. More than four times as many deaths reportedly occurred in those hospitals in March-May 2020 (n=4,244).
Most of the deaths occurred in just four weeks, after the CARE$ Act was passed, and during a time when emergency department visits and ambulance transports had dropped and third-party witnesses were banned from the premises. (See Figure 8 in Does New York City 2020 Make Any Sense?)
HHC refusing to release earlier data adds to my suspicions about data tampering (e.g., deaths from the past were moved into the future, higher death levels “normally” occurring in January-February and/or June-December in 2017-2019 than occurred in the 2020 data).
HHC Deaths vs Deaths in All NYC Hospitals
It might surprise New Yorkers that the taxpayer-funded HHC hospitals can’t blamed for the bulk of the spring 2020 hospital death event.
The ratio of HHC hospital deaths versus all NYC hospital deaths rose from ~15% to ~20% during the spring emergency period (Figure 5 below).
Subtracting the HHC data from the data for all hospitals shows an incredible death event in the private hospitals as well. (Figure 6 above)
Did the HHC Death Event Really Happen?
We are left with only two possibilities for the HHC hospital death event: Either it happened as presented or it didn’t (which can also said of the entire NYC death spike).
I currently believe it didn’t – which doesn’t mean there was no excess death “on the ground” in those weeks – but that we are looking at a curve that is engineered or manipulated in one or more ways.
If it did happen – that is, if the number of patients shown to have died on each day actually died on those days in one (and only one) hospital — where is the report on how HHC handled the event and what they learned from it? Staff were rewarded with free vacations, which implies they did what was expected – and beyond.
What can other urban hospital systems learn from their experiences with a 700% increase in patient deaths? Shouldn’t a federal agency or independent auditor be investigating not only what occurred inside of New York City’s public hospitals in those weeks but in the private hospitals too?
Perhaps the only thing more unsettling than the answers to such questions is the fact that so few people are asking.
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