Sharing August 2024 emails between Will Jones of The Daily Sceptic (UK) and myself, with Jones’ consent, as artifacts of correspondence surrounding the question of whether all-cause mortality data can or should necessarily be trusted. I first interacted with Jones via open letter in “A Very Long Open Letter to Will Jones of The Daily Sceptic Regarding Ventilator and Iatrogenic Death in New York City”. Another interaction is documented in “Question Everything (Except that Thing)”. I posted these emails to WH76 on 25 March 2025 but have now archived them under 6 August 2024.

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On Mon, 5 Aug 2024, Will Jones wrote:

Hi Jessica

Did you look into this analysis? https://www.hartgroup.org/death-notices/

Will

On Mon, 5 Aug 2024, Jessica Hockett wrote:

Hi Will. 

I have read it previously and can let you know what I think.

Are you doing a story on the issue?

Jessica

On Mon, 5 Aug 2024, Will Jones wrote:

Thanks Jessica. I’m not doing a story. Your recent posts reminded me of the issue and I was just wondering what you made of it.

Have you seen the obit data for New York?

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Jessica Hockett wrote:

I have not done the work of accessing and reproducing the data in the article myself, which I would need to do in order to fairly assess the patterns and interpretations thereof.

At least in the U.S., obituaries via Legacy.com wouldn’t necessarily be comprehensive. I emailed Legacy.com earlier this year and requested associated data, but they said it’s proprietary, so I considered that route a dead end for now. 

That said, the gist of the HART article fits with my overall hypothesis about NYC and places around the world re: manipulated all-cause death data. Unlike Denis Rancourt and many others, I do not believe all-cause death data is unassailable.

I have FOI requests into a few agencies regarding time-series data for burial and cremation permits.

Did you see my posts about Hart Island and the FEMA funeral assistance data?

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Will Jones wrote:

The fact that these charts mismatch so starkly is disturbing to me.

Likewise Texas. Lots of obits in Feb-Apr 2020, but no extra deaths.

I can’t figure out an explanation for this. Is there a social explanation for why obits would spike in Feb 2020 despite the lack of deaths? (There was no spring 2020 obit spike in New Zealand.)

England is the opposite: the spike in deaths in April produced no spike in obits.

I’d really like to see other data eg from funeral homes and cemeteries (plus the New York obit data) to see if these shed any light on it.

Will

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Jessica Hockett wrote:

See below.

Thanks Jessica.

Yes, I saw your posts about Hart Island and FEMA. For FEMA, do you have the data for January and February 2020? Do you have a time series chart for them? Would be interesting to see.

The FEMA program applies only to deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate. Timeseries graph in article: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/fema-covid-19-funeral-assistance

The thing that struck me about the obit data was the Feb and March spike, for which there was no corresponding spike in the death data – US deaths dropped in Feb and were scarcely elevated in March.

Right. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/weekly-deaths-all-causes-january

In my fraud theory, deaths could be pushed forward from the past. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/the-f-word I’ve said elsewhere that I believe this may have occurred in multiple countries worldwide, as part of a “coordinated response.”

With the obituaries, it’s not that I don’t find the data disturbing, it’s that I’m not sure how reliable those obit sites/sources are. 

As I said, the patterns match my hypotheses. 

Any data I get for NYC I post on my Substack. Another somewhat related post you may have missed: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/an-incalculable-loss-revisiting-the

I addressed the issue of death notices in this webinar Jonathan Engler and I did a few months ago. I’m biased, but I recommend watching it regardless 🙂 https://vimeo.com/928895517 [password: NYC-Bergamo-325?]

Jessica

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Will Jones wrote:

Thanks. The time series chart (sorry I missed it) seems to match the timings of the death wave (though not the scale, as you say).

I still don’t know what to make of the obit data.I’ll keep an eye on your blog for anything new you uncover on (not) corroborating deaths data.

Will

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Jessica Hockett wrote:

If I were you, I’d be thinking “Maybe Jessica is right after all” 🙂

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25 March 2026: I may or may not be “right,” but I have been clear since spring 2023, in presentations and articles, about what I believe the evidence (and the absence thereof) suggests may be the case in New York City and with daily death curves around the world, including those showing no excess or even negative excess in spring 2020. (See language used in selected tweets below.) One manipulated daily ACM curve in a single large city is enough to distort a country’s curve in magnitude, timing, or both.

Denis Rancourt, whom I mentioned to Jones, and I corresponded by Twitter DM about this issue, beginning in May 2023 at my initiation and continuing periodically through February 2024. For articles about or related to Rancourt’s perspective, see the “COVID Debates/Perspectives” page under his name.