Wood House 76

In November 2024, German data analyst Tom Lausen said he suspected the Bergamo province death spike to be “fake,” due to the absence of a pull forward effect.¹

Having already said that I considered the Bergamo event curve to be manipulated,² Lausen’s presentation motivated a more formal explanation of why an associate and I believe the official data are fraudulent.³

Subsequent articles reinforce and extend the points with

• comparisons to Hurricane Katrina⁴ and a similar-sized county in the U.S.,⁵
• closer scrutiny of claims made by media⁶ and local officials,⁷
• signs that the curve is more modeled than measured, and⁸
• counterpoints to epidemiologist John Ioanndis’s view on the event.⁹

Now it seems that Lausen has reversed course and believes the data are showing a real-time event. In response, I address what he has said based on my understanding of his most recent statements. I will amend this article or write a follow-up if my interpretation is incorrect or if Lausen and his colleagues share their analysis in written form. [As of 15 January 2026, I could find no draft or published paper by Lausen and colleagues describing their visit and findings.]

Cemetery Visits

In a 7 May 2025 presentation to the EU Parliament, Tom Lausen reported that he and a team spent ten days in Bergamo in order to count graves.

Translation:¹⁰

“Now many other critical people have said maybe this really large spike in Bergamo may have been a data manipulation & I’ve also thought about that as a theoretical explanation. And that’s a key reason why I resolved to go and count gravestones in Bergamo.

We went there in April, we visited 27 cemeteries in and around Bergamo city, we hand counted every gravestone & there can be no question of faking it here because you see the names, dates & photos of the deceased.

And with a decent 17% sample size we verified the Eurostat numbers are real, these people died.“

Lausen’s graphs are shown below. The first appears to be quarterly, the second is weekly.

According to an English-language summary:¹¹

• deaths were recorded for the years 2017 to 2025
• in 2020 weekly deaths were recorded in the critical weeks 9 to 18
• the age of death was noted
• 27 cemeteries within the Bergamo province were surveyed
• the survey sample represents 17% of cemeteries in the province

Per data from the Italian Statistical Authority, there were 7,946 deaths in Bergamo Province between March 2-May 2, 2020, which is roughly 6,000 more deaths than occurred during the same weeks in 2019.

Questions

My questions follow:

1. If Lausen’s team went to 27 cemeteries (17%) of 159, how could their count substantiate the toll? What proportion of all burials do those 27 cemeteries comprise? How many graves did they count? Thousands? Are they extrapolating from the 27 to the 159? If so, on what basis?
2. Where is the raw data collected that shows the dates of death and the number of graves counted in each location of people who died on that day? A curve that is fraudulent is distorted in magnitude, timing, or both.¹² If 200 deaths are reported for one day but only actually 100 occurred on that day, the curve is false.
3. Were names recorded? Can the individual names, ages, birth/death dates be made public for verification/corroboration purposes?
4. Do Bergamo municipalities keep burial permit or other records? What about cremations? Were these checked and can they be obtained and released?
5. There were reports of decedents being moved for burial to other provinces. How are these accounted for?

If Tom Lausen has responded to or integrated the points Jonathan Engler or I have raised in analyses of the Lombardy/Bergamo event, it has not been brought to our attention.

Analysts from different countries who speak different languages can struggle to fully grasp and clearly represent each other’s arguments. I hope to better understand Mr. Lausen’s current position on the Bergamo death spike in the near future, including whether he believes a novel coronavirus was spreading at all and why he has changed his mind about the all-cause curve potentially being “fake”.

---

References and footnotes

1. As reported by Howard Steen: https://x.com/HowardSteen4/status/1857797661715276055 ↩︎
2. e.g., Three Cities, Same Virus?  ↩︎
3. Hockett, J., & Engler, J. (2024, November 24). “Yes, we believe the Bergamo (Italy) all-cause death curve is fraudulent”. Wood House 76. ↩︎
4. Hockett, J. (2024, November 25). “Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans versus COVID-19 in Bergamo, Italy.” Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2024/11/25/hurricane-katrina-in-new-orleans-versus-covid-19-in-bergamo-italy/ ↩︎
5. Hockett, J. (2025, February 26). “DuPage County (IL) vs Bergamo Province (Italy): Daily deaths, October 2017–May 2022.”  Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2025/02/26/dupage-county-il-vs-bergamo-province-italy-daily-deaths-oct-2017-may-2022/ ↩︎
6. Hockett, J., & Engler, J. (2025, January 16). “Did the Trucks of Bergamo Carry Only One Coffin Each – and Does it Really Matter?” Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2025/01/16/did-the-trucks-of-bergamo-carry-only-one-coffin-each-and-does-it-really-matter/ ↩︎
7. Hockett, J., & Engler, J. (2025, March 31). “The City of Bergamo’s accusations against Antonio Porto do not validate the spring 2020 death spike.” Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2025/03/31/the-city-of-bergamos-accusations-against-antonio-porto-do-not-validate-the-spring-2020-death-spike/ ↩︎
8. Hockett, J., & Engler, J. (2025, May 6). “Is the Bergamo 2020 death curve more ‘modeled’ than ‘measured’?” Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2025/05/06/is-the-bergamo-2020-death-curve-more-modeled-than-measured/ ↩︎
9. Hockett, J., & Engler, J. (2025, April 6). “John Ioannidis is wrong about the Bergamo and New York City spring 2020 death spikes.” Wood House 76. https://woodhouse76.com/2025/04/06/john-ioannidis-is-wrong-about-the-bergamo-and-new-york-city-spring-2020-death-spikes/ ↩︎
10. Via Howard Steen https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1921369113856782549 ↩︎
11. Steen, H. (2025, April 29). Solving the puzzle of Bergamo. Howard Steen Substack https://howard366646.substack.com/p/solving-the-puzzle-of-bergamo ↩︎
12. See “The F Word” for full articulation of how I define a fraudulent daily death curve and the strategies I think could be employed to achieve one. The context is New York City but the ideas are broadly applicable. ↩︎

Last edited 15 January 2026

Next related article:

Absence of expected stochasticity is grounds for suspecting data fraud and demanding proof: Comparing Bergamo and New York Spring 2020 to Milan 1630 and other high-casualty curves

All Bergamo articles:

Bergamo Death Spike