Request to New York City Dept of Health for the number of death certificates issued monthly since 2006 is largely denied with a familiar excuse that doesn't make sense
Another reason to suspect that much about the 2020 death curve is being hidden
Last November, I submitted the following request to the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DOH):
—Number of death certificates requested from NYC DOHMH per month from January 2006 - December 2023
—Number of death certificates issued in response to requests to NYC DOHMH from January 2006 - December 2023
The request—originally suggested by a Substack reader—is an attempt to work around the fact that New York does not publish death records or allow public access to them under freedom of information laws. There are many signs that the city’s 2020 death curve is manipulated, with the 27,000-death spike in the spring misrepresenting what actually occurred in real time.
DOH finally responded to the request last week with far less than I asked for. They sent only the total number of death certificates issued in 2019-2024, and said
The remainder of your request is denied due to the following:
the data you have requested cannot be extracted from a computer storage system with reasonable effort; and
the data you have requested would require the creation of a new record.
No statutes were cited, but New York City Health + Hospitals Corporation (HHC) has repeatedly used this same excuse to deny me “baseline” data and other records.1
However - as I explained in this article - Section 89 in state law says
When an agency has the ability to retrieve or extract a record or data maintained in a computer storage system with reasonable effort, it shall be required to do so. When doing so requires less employee time than engaging in manual retrieval or redactions from non-electronic records, the agency shall be required to retrieve or extract such record or data electronically. Any programming necessary to retrieve a record maintained in a computer storage system and to transfer that record to the medium requested by a person or to allow the transferred record to be read or printed shall not be deemed to be the preparation or creation of a new record.
and
When records maintained electronically include items of information that would be available under this article, as well as items of information that may be withheld, an agency in designing its information retrieval methods, whenever practicable and reasonable, shall do so in a manner that permits the segregation and retrieval of available items in order to provide maximum public access.
NYC DOH is a very large agency with the means and responsibility to design storage systems and retrieval methods that permit access requested records. My request was very straightforward and well within the parameters of what we would expect any health department in any jurisdiction to be able to procure with minimal effort. Extraction does not constitutes creating a new record. The onus is on them, not me (the requestor) to maintain their systems in a manageable way.
Records Provided
Figure 1 shows the number of death certificates issued to requestors in 2019-2024 for deaths occurring in New York City.
Given that the pre-2020 “normal” number of deaths in the city was around 55,000 annually, I did not expect the figures to be in the hundreds of thousands. DOH staff confirmed that the numbers provided represent all death certificates issued to requestors within each calendar year, regardless of when the deaths actually occurred.
I’ve since submitted a new request for two specific data points: the total number of death certificates issued each year for deaths that occurred in that same year, and the total number of deaths per year for which at least one death certificate was issued. I’ll report those data if and when I receive them.
Expected or Unexpected?
Comparing the records I obtained with the number of deaths that occurred in NYC during the corresponding years, 2020 stands out as the year with the highest number of death certificates issued since 2019. However, the ratio of deaths to death certificates issued in 2020—7.07—is the lowest across all six years, which is unexpected.
Also surprising is the gap between the percentage increase in total deaths from 2019 to 2020 (50.83%) and the increase in death certificates issued during the same period (36.23%). While the death certificate data isn’t limited to deaths occurring within each respective year—and we lack a baseline for 2018 and 2019 due to the DOH’s refusal to release data from those years and earlier—I would still expect the increase in certificates to more closely mirror the rise in actual deaths. The gap persists through 2024, even as deaths return to a normal level. Added post-pub: If “normal” for deaths occurring in NYC is 54,000-55,000, then it’s curious that the number of death certificates issued in 2023 and 2024 is much higher than in 2019 (which appears very low, even though the data are all death certificates issued in the year irrespective of the decedent’s year of death).
Congress’s approval of FEMA Funeral Assistance for COVID-19 deaths in early 2021—retroactive to January 2020—should have led to an increase in death certificate requests, assuming that applicants sought multiple copies for various purposes. However, since the FEMA program did not require submission of physical copies, that expectation may not be entirely appropriate.
Records I obtained directly from FEMA last year showed a relatively small fraction of the 27,000 “excess deaths” during the spring 2020 mass casualty event in New York “received” federal funeral assistance - with the total number of applicants and recipients failing to substantiate the biggest mass casualty event in the city’s history.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to obtain more precise figures that allow for meaningful comparisons.
The refusal to release baseline data—or to provide the numbers in a monthly format—is concerning and reflects a broader pattern of recalcitrance I’ve encountered in my requests to New York City agencies, especially where records from the years before 2020 are involved.
Title of graph changed post-publication for clarity.
See list at the end of this article: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/nyc-health-hospitals-corporation
Outstanding work, Jessica. Unfortunately, even if you could prove the 2020 death curve was manipulated, the courts would likely dismiss any case by saying "no standing." Unless someone can show personal, direct harm — like financial loss or rights being individually violated — the system shrugs and moves on. Worse, government agencies hide behind sovereign immunity, tying up any real challenge until it dies of old age. In the end, the system protects itself, not the truth — and certainly not the people it deceived.
What is equally disturbing is that this continues to fall on deaf ears, or is met with derision. Ms Hockett’s posts should be overwhelming Twitter—i know of nobody in my daily circle who would even show the least bit of interest— (but then, i live in unhinged Covid california) or worse than that, i get: “Bro, covid is so over dude, move on!”. Well, okay, least we know how it happened in the first place … i just spend greater part of the day shaking my head. Abide!