New York is Hiding Crucial Hospital Data From Spring 2020 and Ignoring Questions about Discrepancies for an "Epicenter" Hospital

We the People have a right to see all data for the hospitals that were used to scare the world into giving up their liberties and believing a new deadly pathogen was on the loose

The NYS Department of Health is hiding crucial hospital data from spring 2020 that would help confirm whether New York City was overrun with patients, like media and officials claimed they were.

The agency is also ignoring my questions about why their occupancy data for Elmhurst Hospital doesn’t match data I obtained from the healthcare system that manages the hospital.

The Problem

The essence of the problem can be illustrated with one graph.

This is the number of NYC hospital beds occupied in the first months of 2020, from a source file published by the New York State Department of Health.

Figure 1

The file begins with March 26, 2020. As you can see, that start-date leaves a lot of data missing.

I asked the state for earlier data and was told:

“There are no plans at this time to report data from earlier in 2020. It is likely the reporting system and the labs were not set up in time to report information from before that start date.”

Obviously, the data exist, even if not in the current “reporting system.” Saying there are “no plans at this time” to release data is Bureaucratic Code for “We have it, but we’re not giving it to you.” Labs have nothing to do with hospital bed occupancy, so the whole response is really just the state telling me to go away.

Withholding such data from the public is outrageous no matter what, but it’s borderline criminal when we consider that NYC hospital capacity was weaponized to convince the World that a novel deadly coronavirus was devastating city healthcare facilities.

Americans might remember how the specter of NYC hospitals on the brink of collapse was used (then and later) to "justify” harmful, unethical, and illegal measures like

• locking children out of school and closing playgrounds,

• shutting down certain businesses,

• forbidding worship services, weddings, & funerals,

• requiring people to cover their faces in public,

• coercing medical treatments,

• keeping “unvaccinated” people out of auditions, theaters, restaurants, museums, etc.

These were hospitals that

• barred third-party witnesses to what was going on (exception: media acting as the propaganda arm of elected & appointed officials),

• alleged that COVID/COVID onslaught killed staff and drove a doctor to suicide,

• claimed to be the “epicenter” of a deadly novel coronavirus outbreak.

Hospitals located in a city where

• EMTs were discouraged from bringing cardiac arrest patients to “overwhelmed hospitals,” lest they spread the virus

• Religious communities were scapegoated for spread,

• The number of people intubated and placed on mechanical ventilators - is still undisclosed,

• The number of nursing home residents who died in hospitals remains a mystery.

So, it’s a big freaking deal that “there are no plans” to release all hospital data.¹

“Look! COVID! More Patients!”

It’s tempting to look at the occupancy data in the state’s incomplete file and assume there was a large influx of people being admitted — and admitted because they were suddenly sick with COVID-19.

Figure 2

But consider that city emergency room visits did not spike and admissions peaked in January. Without the earlier occupancy data, we can’t confirm if occupancy was higher than it was in prior months, or by how much.

Do New York state officials expect us to simply accept that the equivalent of the peak NYC’s spring hospital inpatient census died in 2.5 months?² Do they think we should just believe that 75%+ of those deaths are due to COVID-19, as both city & federal data allege?

Perhaps earlier bed data aren’t being shown because they would call the bluff on this suspiciously steep and insanely high hospital inpatient death curve.³

Figure 3

Whatever the real reasons, there’s no excuse for keeping any of it secret.

The Elmhurst Example

Data I obtained last year from the agency that manages Elmhurst “Epicenter of the Epicenter” Hospital in Queens strongly suggest the state’s numbers are misleading, if not fraudulent.

The easiest way to show this is with an email I sent in August to the Office of Primary Care and Health Systems Management. (Note: This is different from my email to H+H about another discrepancy I wrote about last week.)

Attachment

Figure 4

Observe what each of these datasets is showing, because both can’t be right.

For example, the state shows 510 beds were occupied on April 2, 2020, but the health system in charge of the hospital (H+H) says 299 beds were filled with patients. Which one was it?

The H+H data is the number of patients in ICU and Non-ICU beds. Purportedly, the state’s is too.

Yet we see two different stories about Elmhurst. The state’s story shouts “DISASTER!!” - which was simulation specialist Colleen Smith’s vibe about what was happening. H+H’s story says, “Everything’s fine here. Situation normal/below normal” - which is consistent with Elmhurst’s ED visit and admissions.

What’s the truth?

The NYS Department of Health hasn’t responded to my email.⁴

What We Need - Immediately

Clearly, the data we need to discern how many lies we were told about what was happening in New York City hospitals at the onset of a Pandemic Declaration is being kept from the public. This is in addition to the officials’ failure to provide actual proof that 37K people died in 11 weeks, whether in hospitals, personal residences, hospice facilities, nursing homes, or other places.

We the People - who were told it would only be 15 days to save the hospitals - have a right to know what New York is hiding.

Daily hospital admissions and patient census data going back at least five years should be released to the public immediately.

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h/t @LucyLou_Two for helpful edits. Access all posts related to New York City’s spring 2020 mass casualty event here.

1. Maybe the D.C.-area consulting firm that’s being paid $4.3 million to review the state’s “COVID response” will find the data. Their report is anticipated before the end of the year. We can be pretty sure there will be no conclusion other than “New York wasn’t prepared; they were caught off-guard. More money must be spent on preparing for future pandemics.” My guess is that any data issues will be reported as errors made due being overwhelmed by a global deadly pandemic.

2. Peak census for all inpatients between 3/26 - 5/31 is reported as 20,007. Total hospital inpatient deaths from mid-March to end of May, per CDC WONDER = 19,827 (all causes). Total hospital inpatient COVID deaths from mid-March to end of May = 14,704 (U07.1, underlying cause).

3. People will say it was mostly overzealous ventilator use, but as I told Will Jones of the Daily Sceptic, we simply don’t have the data to conclude how many deaths in these weeks can be attributed to that measure. And the ICU intubation census data we do have are in the same incomplete file from the state that are the focus of the present post.

4. NYDOH also recently told me there are no responsive records to my FOIL request for daily hospital admissions (for any reason) to all NYC hospitals. I had first asked to the city health department, who said they don’t have that data but to ask the state.