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New York City’s spring 2020 mass-casualty event is a global and domestic outlier that warrants closer scrutiny.

The events and death toll in America’s largest city were used to scare the country, and the world, and justify the sudden implementation of a response akin to an anticipated bomb attack, rather than a disease outbreak.

Dr. Jessica Hockett suggests that time-series data and primary source documents she has been analysing raise serious questions about when, where and if people died.

During a Pandemic Data & Analytics (“PANDA”) Open Science Session, Dr. Jessica Hockett gave a two-part presentation sharing aspects of her hypothesis-in-progress about what happened and what it suggests about whether the New York City (“NYC”) mortality experience is evidence that a global viral pandemic occurred. Content included data Dr. Hockett has obtained via public records requests, as well as already-public datasets that media and researchers overlook.

In the spring of 2020, NYC was key in convincing not only America but the world that SARS-CoV-2 was a deadly virus – that everything needed to be disrupted to slow or stop the spread. “So, answering questions about New York City, which have not been sufficiently answered by anyone, I think is key to just getting at the heart of what occurred with this whole global viral pandemic declaration,” Dr. Jessica Hockett said. 

Below is the video of both parts of Dr. Hockett’s presentation.  The first part was presented on 23 May 2023 and ends at timestamp 59:30.  The second part was presented on 25 July 2023.  If you’re short of time you can watch the second part only as Dr. Hockett begins with a quick recap of her earlier presentation. The text that is below the video is a combination of both parts. 

If the video above is removed from YouTube, you can watch it on Rumble HERE.

From the outset, Dr. Hockett has not been convinced that there was a sudden spread of a novel respiratory pathogen that killed 27,000 people in NYC within 11 weeks. Over 90% of the NYC covid deaths and also excess all-cause deaths for the 2020 year occurred within these 11 weeks.  So, Dr. Hockett’s research has been focused on New York City in 2020.  Her research is not funded and she does it in her personal time.

NYC experienced an unprecedented, near peerless mass casualty event in the spring of 2020.  Dr. Hockett believes that although NYC is the outlier, it is the exception that proves the rule. “I believe that this in-depth study of what occurred there generates some rules that are applicable to the entire pandemic,” she said. “That’s why, or one reason why, my focus has been on a very specific time period and sequence of events.”

From the data Dr. Hockett has used in her research she doesn’t feel that whether a virus or a novel virus exists or not is important. “I don’t think you need [a virus] to explain or start to explain what occurred,” she said.

The hypothesis that Dr. Hockett is working on is that the NYC excess mortality was not due to a deadly pathogen spreading within the population but rather the measures taken in response to the anticipation of a pathogen spreading.

What was the scale of the event?

“An astounding number of casualties occurred [in April 2020],” Dr. Hockett said.  Mortality didn’t rise gradually as one would expect with an outbreak of a disease, but we see it dramatically go up after the advent of mass testing and other government interventions,” she said

For the 12 years before 2020, from 2008 to 2019, every April the number of deaths in NYC was between 4,100 and 4,600.  But in April 2020 there were a little over 24,600 deaths during the month – a 450% increase from previous years. “Pretty much unmatched around the world at that time maybe with the exception of Bergamo [Italy],” she said.

By analysing all-cause mortality, Dr. Hockett deduces that the rise in excess deaths began on 18 March 2020.  “It’s astounding to me that we don’t have anything going on in all-cause mortality leading up to mid-March,” she said.  “And then, perhaps even more striking, is that all-cause mortality – daily all-cause mortality and weekly and monthly – dropped like a rock.  It actually went below the baseline and doesn’t rise again until late December, which is during the advent of the mass vaccination campaign.” 

13,000 of the deaths in April 2020 occurred in just 15 days, which is 4.5 times the deaths from the September 11 attacks (9/11).

The official narrative is that the virus hit NYC harder and then NYC defeated the virus.  This is the narrative believed by most New Yorkers, it is the narrative described in former NYC governor Andrew Cuomo’s book ‘American Crisis’ and it is also Donald Trump’s narrative.

NYC has five boroughs.  Of these five, Manhattan and Staten Island saw a lower increase in mortality.  The CDC’s explanation is that a number of people fled from Manhattan.  “I do think that’s true that a lot of the rich fled to their place in the Hamptons or Cape Cod or what have you.   So, the emptying out of Manhattan could explain some of that,”  Dr. Hockett said.

The NYC Health Bureau of Vital Statistics claims that 2020 deaths were nothing like 1918.  But this isn’t true as the all-cause mortality for 2020 far exceeds that of 1918.  “We’re saying that covid was more deadly than the storied 1918 flu pandemic.  Really?  Really?” Dr. Hockett asked with disbelief.

Who died in the event?

Who died in NYC is a key question that we don’t really have a lot of answers for, Dr. Hockett said.

The age profile of all-cause deaths over the 11-week peak death period in 2020 shows that there were a lot of younger people, who are not susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, that died in NYC.  “New York is an outlier in this regard,” she explained.  About one-third of the increased mortality was in people aged under 70 and these deaths in younger age groups started pretty much at the beginning of the death peak.  “I haven’t seen this demographic profile [in any other location],” Dr. Hockett said.

The New York mortality report which was released in April 2023 showed where people who had died had been born and the overwhelming majority of them had been born in the United States.

Where did people die?

If there’s some new virus that’s adding to the risk of mortality, Dr. Hockett said, you would expect hospital deaths to be going up. “I don’t see it [in the graph below].”

“Were there are more people dying at home … in any appreciable way right before [covid] hit? I don’t see that,” she said.

We do see a rise in deaths in nursing home and hospice settings in February 2020.  “Some points about that are notable,”  Dr. Hockett said.  She explained further. The numbers are small and the deaths are driven by circulatory and nervous system causes.  And when the 10-week totals are compared to the same period in 2018 and 2019, the 2020 total deaths are lower than the previous two years.

“Very importantly, in mid-February, the New York City Department of Health issued an alert to nursing homes telling them to plan for covid-19 … I think that’s interesting,” she said.

Another indicator is the number of calls to emergency services around the time of peak deaths.  After the first case of covid in NYC was announced on 1 March 2020, the weekly calls to emergency services for non-life-threatening conditions increased slightly.  And then calls for life-threatening conditions increased a little later.  Most of the life-threatening calls were from people reporting they couldn’t breathe and heart issues.  However, hospital emergency department visits plummeted.

After the shutdowns were announced, there is an indication that people were going to the emergency rooms for minor ailments, for example, a cough. “But overall, the volume of people going to the emergency departments and the intake of the hospitals was down. This was true nationwide as well, although not quite as dramatic a plummet … [such] as in New York City,” Dr. Hockett said.

Below is a timeline of events mapped onto a graph of all-cause deaths.  On 20 March, Cuomo implemented Mathilda’s Law, named after his mother, which in Dr. Hockett’s opinion was “an illegal quarantine order issued for the elderly.”

“When we look at home deaths … Matilda’s Law or just the general shutdown order plays a different kind of role in a city,” she said. The stay-at-home order could easily cause elderly people in large city environments like New York to die who would otherwise have not died.

“27 000 extra people [died] in 11 weeks and I would say it’s because of the interventions – a ton of them. Not just one thing, not just ventilators, not just the stay-home orders … by the end of the 15 days [to slow the spread] and beyond the mortality keeps going up and up and up.  And … the damage was done …  it was too late. And no matter if it was a virus or not, people were dead.”

Every death certificate in the United States has options for seven places of death to select from.  The majority of deaths occurring in the 11 weeks were in hospitals; it’s not known how many nursing home residents died in hospitals.

Dr. Hockett has obtained the hospital beds occupied data through a Freedom of Information Act. “The overwhelmed hospital narrative is a bunch of malarkey according to the data,” she said. 

Below is a graph of data for the beds occupied in Elmhurst Hospital which was purported to be at the epicentre of the covid outbreak.  There’s a significant drop in both ICU and non-ICU bed occupancy in the pre-lockdown days.  Dr. Hockett had recently heard a story of someone who was in NYC Hospital waiting for scheduled elective surgery which was cancelled.  He died in hospital two days later. “So, I really wonder about that drop in the non-ICU bed occupancy and the ICU bed occupancy.  I wonder about deaths in those pre-lockdown days,” she said.

Most of the covid deaths by far were in hospitals which could be explained by the financial benefit hospitals received.  As provided for in the CARES Act, hospitals were monetarily incentivised to place covid as a cause of death on death certificates. And taking the data at face value, “New York City hospitals would have us believe that nothing else that was going on caused an extra death, that it was all [extra deaths] because of covid and that to me is just outrageous,” Dr. Hockett said.

“Only 1,700 to 1,800 of [nursing home] deaths have covid as underlying cause … we had a lot of non-covid death in nursing homes for various reasons,” she said.  This is notable because officials made the deaths attributed to covid in nursing homes a key feature of the covid narrative.

A large number of deaths “at home” were heart-related.  One of the orders that were given to NYC Emergency Medical Service teams was to not bring adult cardiac arrest patients to hospital.  This may explain part of the increase in “at-home” deaths.

After explaining them in more detail, Dr. Hockett said she believes it was the interventions and treatments in hospitals that caused extra deaths, although she can’t quantify how many.  According to studies that came out early on, “I think it was known that the ventilators, among other things, were killing people but no nobody wanted to say what exactly was going on,” she said.

“I don’t think that we have murders on our hands here. I think we have some [hospital staff] that were being subjected to some psychological duress by the messages that they were being told.”

Who is Jessica Hockett?

Jessica Hockett has a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Virginia. For over 20 years, she worked in and with schools and agencies in the US, Canada, and South America, to improve curriculum, instruction, and programmes.

Her publications include numerous articles related to the education field, as well as three books – ‘Exam Schools: Inside America’s Most Selective Public High Schools’, ‘Differentiation in Middle and High School: Strategies to Engage All Learners’ and ‘Differentiation in the Elementary Grades: Strategies to Engage & Equip All Learners’.

Dr. Hockett’s current work involves policy research and analysis for the National Opportunity Project, a government watchdog and education non-profit. Her paper on the implementation of federal Covid relief funds for non-public schools was released in March: ‘From shutdown to shut out: How America’s low-income students continue to be hurt by Covid policy’.  A forthcoming paper focuses on politically/ideologically-biased teacher-hiring practices in K12 public schools.

In the Covid-response era, Jessica used her Twitter account and Substack to push against mandates and for common sense. She leveraged her research skills and investigative tenacity to obtain public records, communicate directly with government officials, and gather data that uncovered illegalities and inefficacies of harmful orders and policies. Highlights of her research were exposing the University of Illinois’ false claims to FDA emergency use authorisation for its Covid saliva test; assisting with a lawsuit against Chicago’s vaccine passport; testifying as a data analyst in a vaccine mandate arbitration case; helping lead the fight for mask choice in schools and churches; homeschooling her two children in 2020-21; and being censored by and banned for almost six months from Twitter.

Featured image: Coronavirus: Andrew Cuomo blames Donald Trump for ‘worst failure since Pearl Harbor’, The Guardian, 7 October 2020