’s conclusions. (You can view that dialogue in Notes.)
I was not familiar Dr. Rancourt (as a person or as a researcher) or his work until mid-2023, but his June 2020 paper All-cause mortality during COVID-19:1 No plague and a likely signature of mass homicide by government establishes that he was an early “No Pandemic” voice.2
In the paper, Rancourt correctly characterized cause-of-death attribution data as “intrinsically unreliable” due to the inherent messiness of determining cause of death, physician bias, political influences, and news media. The standard for rigorous epidemiological studies, he said, is all-cause mortality data, because it isn’t susceptible to and cannot be altered by observational or reporting biases.
From a scientific perspective, Rancourt is not wrong that mortality patterns over time are largely stable and generally reliable for most purposes. I also agree that ACM data is far superior to cause-of-death attribution data.
But because of what I’ve learned through ongoing inquiry involving the New York City spring 2020 mass casualty event, I can’t accept the assertion that ACM isn’t subject to manipulation.
Rancourt’s June 2020 paper called attention to the New York City data and (understandably) assumed the data were legitimate:
The “COVID peak” in the USA data arises from “hot spots,” such as New York City (NYC). Figure 8 shows the all-cause mortality by week for NYC, starting in 2013. The red vertical line indicates the date at which the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NYC data makes no epidemiological sense whatsoever. The “COVID peak” here, on its face, cannot be interpreted as a normal viral respiratory disease process in a susceptible population. Local effects, such as importing patients from other jurisdictions or high densities of institutionalized or housed vulnerable people, must be in play, at least.
Some of the conclusions I’ve arrived at mirror Rancourt’s: the event is in no way epidemiological, is prima facie absurd as anything resembling even a theoretical vision of disease-spread, and any excess deaths that occurred largely involved precipice populations.
Where I disagree is that official data are necessarily depicting a real-time event. I do believe there was excess death in those weeks but assert that the curve is fraudulent.
As far as I can tell from his November 3, 2023 comment on the PANDA article Does New York City 2020 Make Any Sense?Rancourt does not believe all-cause death fraud is at-play with the New York City 2020 event but is open to the idea, should “hard evidence” be produced.
In my view, this report shows that all-cause mortality data for NYC is rigorously incompatible with the COVID-19 narrative (as argued by me since early-2020). However, I do not see hard evidence presented that the mortality data itself is fabricated or manipulated. Every single observation can in theory be explained by a multitude of plausible causes for actual death. The statutory and institutional death accounting is robust, and to propose that it was circumvented in this way is a wild suggestion. NYC is a massive and complex human environment, with a large spectrum of vulnerabilities.
The definitive answer, of course, would be to obtain all the death certificates; or some such representative alternative source such as hospital or institutional records (such methods have been used by several research groups for India, for example).
(Also: Does NY state include NYC, and can this be another way to look at the data? Are NYC deaths from out-of-city residents? Who would have fabricated the data and how, without anyone batting an eye? There was no need or reason to fabricate the data, propaganda alone is clearly sufficient... etc.)
You said, “I do not see hard evidence presented that the mortality data itself is fabricated or manipulated." In this article, we present 8 reasons to DOUBT the data. The reasons we offer here are some "signals" that the data may be fraudulent. Nowhere do we claim that we are proving anything.
These 8 reasons are not the ONLY reasons for doubt; rather, they lay a foundation for other data that are likewise discrepant, missing, make no sense, and appear to have been tampered with. I’ve written other articles related to those data and continue to assess & gather data/records from public agencies via FOI, like I’ve been doing for well over a year and long before I was familiar with your very strong and seminal work. I've waited as long as 6 months and am still waiting on various requests to FEMA, the National Guard, the CDC, and other city/state agencies that I sent months ago. I’m especially concerned about other ambulance dispatch data that show signs of tampering – and with data I obtained from the medical examiner which I hope to share soon.
The speed and magnitude of the NYC event, as presented by daily data supplied by the city's bureau of vital statistics, as well as data from CDC WONDER, do not logically fit with what is purported by other data and evidence to have happened "on the ground," in real time. This is why we say the data don’t make sense. It’s an appeal to logic, as well as to the emotions and experiences of people who were in NYC at the time or who remember watching and hearing about it in the media.
To be clear, entirely faked/fabricated deaths are not something we or I have alleged occurred. Your use of "fabricated" suggests that you think we are saying death certificates without dead people attached to them. Indeed, I’ve said in other articles and on Twitter that it’s the least likely factor because it’s risky. I allow it is within the realm of possibilities, among others, as humans are capable of corrupt behavior, especially where money and threats to power are at play. In the absence of proof, entertaining or allowing for all plausible explanations is the cautious & intellectually honest stance.
I've written that the easiest and most likely avenues for presenting a fraudulent curve would be a) pushing deaths that occurred before March 15 "forward" into the spike (or later deaths "backward" into the same spike, b) double-counting, i.e., counting deaths at home that occurred as a result of the directives given to EMTs to not bring cardiac arrest patients to the hospital as hospital deaths, and/or c) classifying deaths that occurred other jurisdictions as NYC city resident deaths (or NYC county of occurrence deaths), and/or d) fudging date of death in order to substantiate numbers that were reported in real-time but were, in fact, model-based estimates versus actuals (i.e., retrospectively forcing the actuals to match projections).
Startling, too, is the fact that even assiduous journalistic efforts - and the city's list of burials for unclaimed bodies - doesn't give us anywhere close to the number of names we need to substantiate the event. https://x.com/Wood_House76/status/1700191133857468487?s=20 Ten times the mortality equivalent of 9/11, and yet no names (worse, no outcry for names).
You said, “The statutory and institutional death accounting is robust…” Respectfully, what do you mean by “the” statutory and institutional death accounting is “robust”? Which/whose death accounting? Also, it’s robust, therefore it is accurate and can’t be questioned? I’m not sure about Canada, but the U.S. government has told no truths and manipulated data/definitions in every way imaginable to advance its COVID and COVID shot narratives. Yet all-cause mortality is untouchable and should be trusted, no matter what? Why?
As you know, death data are reported as frequencies. The data you speak of as robust are numerical representations of those records -- not the records themselves – and do not constitute proof of death. One might say death certificates aren’t actual proof either, but at least they are a vital record that government officials are elected/appointed to steward. “Secreting” or privatizing those records is wrong. I daresay that if every death certificate were automatically viewable by the public, we’d see a lot less lying about deaths or use of death numbers on a screen or dashboard to scare the populace.
I agree that NYC is a complex system with many vulnerable people (by virtue of its size and density alone). Some people use the term "healthcare fragility" to include the number of fragile/susceptible people in healthcare settings and/or who are dependent on the HC system and who can be easily killed by even slight changes to the system at any time. I've spoken to this in other posts and in presentations as well. I prefer to say "Precipice Theory" and have used a "damaged ships" metaphor to illustrate how these populations can be exploited at any time. https://x.com/Wood_House76/status/1692707623794045431?s=20 That includes for staging sudden spread of a deadly disease.
Precipice Theory and iatrogenic measures may be a sufficient explanation for sudden 2-4 week increases of 20-100% in spring 2020 in the cities that experienced such increases. But when we are talking about sudden increases of 150%+ in the number of daily deaths in 3 weeks – let alone the 700%+ increase in NYC and ~1000% increase in Bergamo – there is reason to suspect we may be dealing with additional, undisclosed forces and/or fraud. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/three-cities-same-virus
Although the list of measures that were implemented suddenly is extensive, what we’re positing here is that fraud may be in the mix alongside iatrogenic measures. We want authorities to be compelled to release every death certificate to the public. Unlike other states, death certificates in New York are NOT subject to FOI. So, part of our goal is to generate interest in/public outcry about in the anomalies and incongruences, toward getting those death certificates released. Certificates for one year do not suffice. My ideal would be 2020, plus back to 1999. NYC should also have to explain the thousands of "probable" COVID deaths starting in mid-April 2020. No information was ever given about when those deaths occurred, though we know from finalized stats that at least some were removed from the COVID total per se.
Regarding "Every single observation can in theory be explained by a multitude of plausible causes for actual death." In theory, yes -- if you’re limited to ACM, a review of policies implemented and don’t analyze daily place of death, hospital, and other data related to the mechanics of the event.
Regarding hospitals, I've spelled out that NYC data are not only absent, incomplete, and nonsensical, but claim that NYC hospitals lost the near-equivalent of their peak occupancy in 11 weeks. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/wait-did-this-really-happen-in-ne
To my knowledge, this would be the biggest mass casualty event in a city hospital system ever. Where is the three-year anniversary documentary of this event? Who is leading the independent review of what actually happened in these facilities? Why is New York hiding hospital data that would help us see the “mechanics” of what happened? https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/new-york-is-hiding-crucial-hospital How about the ventilator data? Why can’t we see a baseline? https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/we-still-dont-know-how-many-people
Is it because a significant portion of hospital deaths were people admitted before “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was declared? If, for example, 50% of the inpatient deaths in the spike was patients who were already in hospital facilities, that information must be disclosed. Instead, the public were (and are) given the perception that “sudden spread” of a novel deadly coronavirus was the culprit. And I know you & I agree this was not a disease spread event, whatever else it was.
If the “hospital or institutional records” you mention means patient records, those are difficult to obtain in the U.S., unless you’re an institution-affiliated researcher. My focus is on records that should be public, not subject to IRB approval. (Inpatient discharge records for NY are available but not as a time-series, which is critical to the study of the event.)
The proposition that the all-cause data may not reflect what happened in real time isn’t “a wild suggestion.” It a very real possibility. When government officials claim a death event occurred, the burden of proof is on them, not me. It’s past time for citizens – and scientists -- to realize that.
Just like with provinces in Northern Italy, it would be very easy to move deaths from one jurisdiction into another.
If Rancourt has said something more recent about potential all-cause death data fraud in NYC than his November 2023 comment, I will update accordingly.
Jonathan Couey [52:57]: I really think it would be important for you, if you have the time, maybe to come back and meet Jessica Hockett on this stream, because she has done so much work specifically on New York, and it would be interesting to talk to her because she sees like a 600% increase in mortality for like four weeks in New York, and that's all that ever happens there. She's still trying to figure—
Denis Rancourt: Well, I would have to look at the data and look at what she's doing and how she's starting to interpret it to really have a good discussion with her. I can already see lots of pitfalls and caveats when you try to do what she's trying to do. So I can foresee a lot of problems, you know, but I haven't had time to really look into detail at what she's doing. But I mean, it's great that she's digging into the data and representing it in different ways and trying to find out more information as well. It's great that she's doing all of that because New York was a very special place and in many ways, the state of New York, but also the major centers, hospitals, and so on, and how they were behaving. So it was a — pretty special events there that were occurring, yes. Extraordinary, I don't know what to say.
I am interested in terms and language used in 2020 to describe what was occurring and suspect that “COVID-19” had/has alternate undisclosed meanings. Rancourt clearly did not believe there was a spreading deadly pathogen - or a pandemic - but what he meant by “During COVID-19” is unclear.
I would prefer to assume the simplest model, which is that the CDC-reported all-cause mortality stats are not manipulated, such as by binning into incorrect date-of-death or incorrect jurisdiction of death. I see no reason or advantage to anyone doing that. I would need to see verifiable accounting proof of such manipulation or error before I change my working hypothesis. I do not believe that the March-April-May 2020 NYC death peak is of a magnitude or sharpness such as to make it unlikely on that basis. Until proven otherwise, I believe that they really did kill that many people that quickly in NYC, hospitals mostly. DR
Hi Jessica,
That is an accurate quote of my comments to you.
I would prefer to assume the simplest model, which is that the CDC-reported all-cause mortality stats are not manipulated, such as by binning into incorrect date-of-death or incorrect jurisdiction of death. I see no reason or advantage to anyone doing that. I would need to see verifiable accounting proof of such manipulation or error before I change my working hypothesis. I do not believe that the March-April-May 2020 NYC death peak is of a magnitude or sharpness such as to make it unlikely on that basis. Until proven otherwise, I believe that they really did kill that many people that quickly in NYC, hospitals mostly. DR
Here's an article in Worth Magazine by Joon Yun from March 2, 2020, already casting doubts about a "pandemic" (unfortunately, he seemed to retreat from the debate once lockdowns were implemented): https://worth.com/how-mass-hysteria-is-making-coronavirus-worse-than-it-actually-is/