In ORDER OF THE COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK REQUIRING ELECTRONIC REPORTING OF DEATHS, dated 10 April 2020, New York City health department Commissioner Oxiris Barbot declared the following:
WHEREAS, on March 25, 2020, pursuant to section 3.01 of the New York City Health Code (the “Health Code”), I issued an Order of the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene, declaring the existence of a public health emergency within the City as a result of COVID-19, for which certain orders and actions are necessary to protect the health and safety of the City of New York and its residents; and
WHEREAS, in recent weeks, the number of deaths in the City reported to the Department has increased dramatically, with reported deaths increasing from an average of approximately 300 such deaths per day in mid-March to more than 1,200 such deaths on April 1, 2020;
Here, Dr. Barbot was implying near-real-time knowledge of both baseline and peak daily mortality. What follows is my explanation of why that implication is difficult to reconcile with the way New York City death data were produced, processed, and later revised.
What official data show
According to official data obtained from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the city was not experiencing an average of 300 deaths a day (COVID or otherwise) in mid-March, and did not experience 1,200 deaths until April 7th. This is the case irrespective of whether deaths among New York City residents or deaths occurring within New York City are used as the point of reference.
The figure below shows two curves: daily deaths occurring in the five boroughs and daily deaths among residents thereof. In both datasets, the first day deaths reach the 300-count threshold is March 24th. The 7-day rolling average reaches 300 on March 26th/27th, i.e., late March.1 Deaths occurring in the city peaked at 1,200 on April 7th.
Why this is a red flag
This discrepancy cannot be explained by differences in definitions, reporting categories, or averaging methods used in later analyses. Deaths take time to process, particularly those occurring at home and in nursing homes. There is no plausible way the Department of Health could have known on April 10, 2020, the date the order was issued, how many deaths had occurred citywide on April 1.
While the order allows a bit of latitude in interpretation due to phrasing, the fact that Commissioner Barbot cited 1,200 deaths as a minimum already reported on April 1, and that this same number later became the peak of the event on April 7, raises serious questions about timing, knowledge, and possible “reconstruction” that can’t be resolved without disclosure.
Notably, the April 10 order preceded the April 13–14 addition of 3,778 “probable COVID” deaths, defined as deaths with COVID-19 or an equivalent listed on the death certificate despite no known positive test.2 A majority of the 4,516 probables added by June 1 were associated with nursing homes and personal residences; the remainder were in hospitals.3 This definitional shift isn’t required to establish the timing discrepancy or magnitude “coincidence,” but it may help explain how later mortality totals could have been retrofitted.
The city health department has, thus far, resisted my attempts to use public records requests to confirm how “the probables” were reclassified and redistributed over time.4 In “The Dashboard that Ruled the World,” Thomas Verduyn demonstrated that the New York City probable COVID death curve is more consistent with a computational or algorithmic process than with deaths counted in real time. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the death figures cited in the April 10 order were impossible to know at that point and may have been informed by a model.
Earlier excess?
Barbot’s “early announcement” of what became a peak number also raises the question of whether excess deaths began earlier than officially reported. I first offered this possibility toward the end of the July 2023 session of a two-part presentation for PANDA Open Science5 and later unpacked the problem more explicitly in “COVID Death Discrepancy for NYC Public Hospitals“.
Briefly, data obtained by Parish et al (2021) for the city’s eleven public hospitals conflict with data I obtained from the same agency. Parish’s dataset shows deaths peaking approximately two weeks earlier. The notion of earlier excess deaths being “dumped” into a post-lockdown announcement period, whether intentionally or in error, is one of fraud techniques described in “The F Word.”
Implications
When an official order cites mortality figures that could not have been known at the time, later match the (reconstructed?) peak of the event, and precede a definitional expansion of deaths, the integrity of the resulting death curve must be questioned.
If the New York City death spike is distorted in magnitude, timing, or both, it would meet the parameters for a fraudulent presentation of what occurred in spring 2020. The death numbers cited in Commissioner Barbot’s order regarding electronic reporting of deaths should be considered additional evidence that the city was being informed by models or estimates that did not reflect reality and were used to convince to public that a deadly virus was spreading and widespread shutdowns necessary.
For all we know, the city may not have experienced 1,200 deaths in a single day at all. The New York City mass casualty event remains unsubstantiated and marked by persistent data anomalies and “evidence of absence” that city, state, and federal officials have not explained or properly investigated.
Post-Publication Note:
Another way of characterizing Barbot’s numbers is that they are “anachronistic”.
Furthermore, the chances of the daily death peak of an event ending in a double-zero number seem very low. While theoretically, perhaps, as likely as any other two-digit ending, for a peak to land on a round, double-zero, headline-friendly number that happened to be used in an official’s order “ahead of schedule” is, I would think, statistically unlikely unless something “non-random” is occurring.
Footnotes and References
- …and just after the CARES Act was passed on 25 March 2020. ↩︎
- https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-deaths-confirmed-probable-daily-04142020.pdf ↩︎
- Thompson CN, Baumgartner J, Pichardo C, et al. COVID-19 Outbreak — New York City, February 29–June 1, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1725–1729. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6946a2 ↩︎
- Hockett, J. (2025, November 30). “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.” Wood House 76. ↩︎
- See page 77 in transcript. ↩︎
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