Wood House 76

UPDATE 27 Jan 2026: My appeal was granted and the data released. I plan to review and report on what I received in February.

UPDATE 11 March 2026: The record the department sent was not the complete record I intended to request. It was dates of death for the 5,405 deaths. The fault was in my wording and I have submitted a new request. Ideally, the Department should be compelled via other public or political pressure, or an executive order/directive from some level go government, to release a complete accounting of “the probables”.

11 March 2026 request (PDF)

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The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is refusing to release records that would help the public understand what the agency did with deaths initially labeled as “probable” COVID deaths in 2020, some of which were determined to not be COVID deaths while others were. I have filed an appeal. Here I provide context for the request, the department’s denial, and the appeal I filed this morning.

Background

The reasons for and history of my request is explained in “The Probable COVID Deaths: Attempting to get the New York City Health Department to show what they did and how they did it with thousands of deaths reported in spring 2020”.

Readers who are new to this issue should read the above article before reading further.

The Request

The request I submitted to NYC DOHMH on 28 August 2025 follows:

Pursuant to FOIL, please provide the following records:

1) Dates of death for deaths originally counted as “probable COVID deaths” in 2020. See page 66 of vital statistics report:https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2020sum.pdf – i.e., the 5,405 deaths, 2,017 of which appear to have been counted in the finalized numbers as COVID-19 deaths under ICD-10 guidelines and the remaining 3,338 Other deaths.

2) Records explaining the definitions for each column in this DOHMH GitHub, ie., confirmed, probable and incomplete.https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/archive/probable-confirmed-dod.csv The data run only through Nov 11, 2020, the last update was 13 December 2020, and entries in the “incomplete” column total 7,000. See graph and table attached. 

3) Records explaining where the 7,000 “Incompletes” in the “incomplete” column in the file above went in the final Vital Statistics report for 2020.

The Response/Denial

Following delays, I received this response on 12 January 2025:

Dear Ms. Hockett: 

My apologies for the delay. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) responds to your request as follows:

1. Dates of death for deaths originally counted as “probable COVID deaths” in 2020. See page 66 of vital statistics report: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2020sum.pdf – i.e., the 5,405 deaths, 2,017 of which appear to have been counted in the finalized numbers as COVID-19 deaths under ICD-10 guidelines and the remaining 3,338 Other deaths. DOHMH denies this part of your request. Neither the Commissioner nor the Commissioner’s designee agree that the requested information is “necessary for a proper purpose. Health Code § 207.11(a). The New York City Health Code is the controlling law on vital records matters in NYC, and this part of your request is therefore exempt under Public Officers Law § 87(2)(a).  See, e.g., In re Bakers Mutual Ins. Co. of New York, 301 N.Y. 21 (1950);  Reclaim the Records v. DOHMH, 189 N.Y.S.3d 460, 462 (2023).

2. Records explaining the definitions for each column in this DOHMH GitHub, ie., confirmed, probable and incomplete. https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/archive/probable-confirmed-dod.csv he data run only through Nov 11, 2020, the last update was 13 December 2020, and entries in the “incomplete” column total 7,000. See graph and table attached. DOHMH does not have records responsive to this part of your request. However, information on the following page may be useful to you. https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/trends/Readme.md.

3. Records explaining where the 7,000 “Incompletes” in the “incomplete” column in the file above went in the final Vital Statistics report for 2020 DOHMH grants this part of your request.  The “incomplete” field was used for display purposes only. That column does not represent a count of any COVID-19 outcomes.

[Directions for submitting an appeal followed]

The Problems with the Response

Item 1

I asked the New York City Department of Health for the dates of death associated with the 5,405 deaths that were originally counted as “probable COVID-19 deaths” in 2020, numbers the department itself discusses in its 2020 Vital Statistics report.

My interpretation of their explanation for refusal is that dates of death come from vital records, which in New York City are controlled by the Health Code rather than the state’s public records law. Under that code, the Health Commissioner has discretion to release such information only if the request is considered “necessary for a proper purpose.” The Commissioner declined to do so, and the City is treating the data as exempt from disclosure.

What’s striking (and obvious), however, is that I wasn’t asking for death certificates, names, or anything that could identify a person. I was asking for counts by date for a group of deaths the City has already publicly described, classified, and reclassified. Those dates were clearly used to produce the City’s own COVID-19 death totals. Once the dates are being used as inputs for reporting official statistics, it’s hard to see how they remain private records; they are part of the methodology.

By treating even non-identifying date information as off-limits, the City effectively prevents independent researchers and taxpayers from checking how its 2020 death numbers were determined — and casts suspicion on the veracity of the timing and shape of the daily all-cause death curve..¹

Items 2 and 3

These requests were related to one another and regarded 7,000 “incompletes” in a file that reports confirmed and probable COVID deaths and is itself incomplete (i.e., shows data though 7 November 2020 and then stops)

I did not explicitly ask about why the dataset ends when it does but did ask about the 7,000 “incompletes”. The records officer directed me to a data dictionary on the DOH GitHub, which I thought I had consulted previously and, if so, overlooked where the “Incomplete” column is “defined”.

I’m not clear as to what “used for display purposes” means, or what constitutes a “display purpose.” In my previous article on this topic, I did state that the 7,000 “could simply be an artifact of system-generated “placeholders,” but also found it curious that 7,000 comes close to other numbers I’ve arrived at in my independent “auditing” (so to speak) of the spring 2020 death spike.

Discussed in last section here:

The Probable COVID Deaths: Attempting to get the New York City Health Department to show what they did and how they did it with thousands of deaths reported in spring 2020

The Appeal

I filed an appeal this morning for Item 1, which is the heart of the request and my concerns. (See text of appeal below and PDF of the Word document I sent.)

The timing of the deaths originally counted as “probable COVID deaths” is critical to evaluating whether the 2020 daily all-cause death curve is a genuine, undistorted representation of what happened in real time — i.e., whether the number of people claimed to have died on each day really did die on those days and in the places claimed (…and really did die and/or die in 2020).

The numbers and explanation on page 66 of the city’s vital statistics report for 2020 are not enough. In April of 2023, when I wrote “The ‘COVID Death’ Reckoning,” I was optimistic about the truth coming out eventually, without having to force it.

page 66 of https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2020sum.pdf 

Nearly three years later, I’m still here and still optimistic, continuing to press for substantiation of what I believe to be the largest mass-casualty event outside of a war in U.S. history — an event invoked to justify decisions that caused harm to billions of people around the world.

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Date: 14 January 2026

Subject: FOIL Administrative Appeal – Denial of Access to Date-of-Death Data for 2020 Probable COVID-19 Deaths. Determination sent from NYCDOH on 12 January 2026

Control # 2025FR01026

Dear Ms. Anhouse,

I hereby appeal, pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(a), the determination of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) denying access to records responsive to part of my FOIL request seeking dates of death for deaths originally classified as “probable COVID-19 deaths” in 2020, as referenced on page 66 of the Summary of Vital Statistics 2020.

The exact language of my original request follows:

• Dates of death for deaths originally counted as “probable COVID deaths” in 2020. See page 66 of vital statistics report: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2020sum.pdf  – i.e., the 5,405 deaths, 2,017 of which appear to have been counted in the finalized numbers as COVID-19 deaths under ICD-10 guidelines and the remaining 3,338 Other deaths.

1) The requested information is statistical, de-identified data, not vital records.

My request does not seek death certificates, individual vital records, or any personally identifying information. I requested only dates of death associated with an already-published statistical cohort, namely the 5,405 deaths originally classified as “probable COVID-19 deaths” in 2020, of which DOHMH reports that 2,017 were later reclassified as COVID-19 deaths under ICD-10 guidelines and 3,388 as other causes.

The requested information is therefore aggregable, non-identifying statistical data, derived from vital records but distinct from the vital records themselves. Courts have long recognized that de-identified statistical abstractions are not synonymous with the underlying protected records, particularly where the agency has already published cohort counts and summaries derived from those records.

2) NYC Health Code § 207.11 does not categorically exempt the requested data.

DOHMH relies on NYC Health Code § 207.11(a), asserting that disclosure requires a determination that the request is “necessary for a proper purpose,” and that the Commissioner did not so determine. However:

1. Section 207.11 governs access to vital records, not all statistical data derived from them.
2. The provision cannot be read so broadly as to exempt any factual data point (e.g., date of death) once it has been abstracted, aggregated, and published in statistical form.
3. DOHMH has routinely released date-of-death–based datasets (including COVID-19 line-level and aggregate date-of-death tables), demonstrating that dates of death are not per se treated as confidential vital records when identifiers are removed.

The denial letter does not contend that release of dates of death would identify individuals, nor that re-identification is likely, nor that the data cannot be provided in aggregate or tabular form.

3) The requested data serves a clear and proper public purpose.

The requested information is necessary to evaluate the internal consistency and methodological basis of DOHMH’s own published statistics, specifically:

• the reclassification of 2,017 deaths from “probable COVID-19” to confirmed COVID-19 deaths under ICD-10 guidance;
• the reassignment of the remaining deaths to non-COVID causes; and
• the temporal distribution of those classifications.

This is not a request for private facts, but for auditability of official public-health statistics, a purpose aligned with FOIL’s mandate to promote transparency and accountability in decision-making.

4) FOIL § 87(2)(a) does not justify blanket withholding.

While Public Officers Law § 87(2)(a) permits withholding where records are “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute,” exemptions must be narrowly construed. Where, as here, the requested information can be disclosed in a manner that avoids release of protected vital records, such as by providing counts by date of death or an anonymized date-of-death table, a categorical denial is unwarranted.

I respectfully request that DOHMH:

1. Reverse the denial and produce the requested dates of death in de-identified or aggregate form, or
2. Identify a specific format in which the information can be disclosed consistent with privacy protections, or 
3. Provide a more detailed explanation of why dates of death for an already-published statistical cohort cannot be released in any non-identifying form.

Please advise of the determination on this appeal within the time required by Public Officers Law § 89(4)(a).

Respectfully submitted,

Jessica A. Hockett, PhD

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1. On a personal note, my husband’s response to what the City said about this portion of my request was, “They’re basically telling you the numbers are faked.” I wouldn’t go that far (yet), despite my contention that the ACM curve is manipulated, but if the Commissioner won’t release the dates of deaths for these probables, I think it’s fair to assume that there is something about the curve (which underlies the all-cause curve) that officials do not want the public to see. ↩︎

Eleven Sets of Serious Problems with the New York City Mass Casualty Event of Spring 2020 (revised and formalized version of September 2024 paper)

Article on “Innovations” in Fatality Management in New York City’s public hospitals fails to say how many fatalities were managed