by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

A study published in the journal Science, Public Health Policy & the Law recently claims that the CDC violated federal law by inflating COVID-19 fatality statistics.

The study is titled “COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Retrospective.”

From the Abstract:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 23, 2020, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19 , on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”

For a nation tormented by restrictive public health policies mandated for healthy individuals and small businesses, this is the most important statistical revelation of this crisis. This revelation significantly impacts the published fatalities count due to COVID-19.

More importantly, it exposes major problems with the process by which the CDC was able to generate inaccurate data during a crisis.

The CDC has advocated for social isolation, social distancing, and personal protective equipment use as primary mitigation strategies in response to the COVID-19 crisis, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the promise of inexpensive pharmaceutical and natural treatments.

These mitigation strategies were promoted largely in response to projection model fatality forecasts that have proven to be substantially inaccurate.

Further investigation into the legality of the methods used to create these strategies raised additional concerns and questions.

Why would the CDC decide against using a system of data collection & reporting they authored, and which has been in use nationwide for 17 years without incident, in favor of an untested & unproven system exclusively for COVID-19 without discussion and peer-review?

Did the CDC’s decision to abandon a known and proven effective system also breach several federal laws that ensure data accuracy and integrity?

Did the CDC knowingly alter rules for reporting cause of death in the presence of comorbidity exclusively for COVID-19? If so, why? (Full study.)

Patrick Howley, writing for National File, reported:

The groundbreaking peer-reviewed research…asserts that the CDC willfully violated multiple federal laws including the Information Quality Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Administrative Procedures Act at minimum. (Publishing Journal – Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge / Public Health Policy Initiative)

“Most notably, the CDC illegally enacted new rules for data collection and reporting exclusively for COVID-19 that resulted in a 1,600% inflation of current COVID-19 fatality totals,” the watchdog group All Concerned Citizens declared in a statement provided to NATIONAL FILE, referring to the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge study.

The research demonstrates that the CDC failed to apply for mandatory federal oversight and failed to open a mandatory period for public scientific comment in both instances as is required by federal law before enacting new rules for data collection and reporting.

“The CDC is required to be in full compliance with all federal laws even during emergency situations. The research asserts that CDC willfully compromised the accuracy and integrity of all COVID-19 case and fatality data from the onset of this crisis in order to fraudulently inflate case and fatality data,” stated All Concerned Citizens.

On March 24th the CDC published the NVSS COVID-19 Alert No. 2 document instructing medical examiners, coroners and physicians to deemphasize underlying causes of death, also referred to as pre-existing conditions or comorbidities, by recording them in Part II rather than Part I of death certificates as “…the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause of death more often than not.”

This was a major rule change for death certificate reporting from the CDC’s 2003 Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting and Physicians’ Handbook on Medical Certification of Death, which have instructed death reporting professionals nationwide to report underlying conditions in Part I for the previous 17 years.

This single change resulted in a significant inflation of COVID-19 fatalities by instructing that COVID-19 be listed in Part I of death certificates as a definitive cause of death regardless of confirmatory evidence, rather than listed in Part II as a contributor to death in the presence of pre-existing conditions, as would have been done using the 2003 guidelines.

“The research draws attention to this key distinction as it has led to a significant inflation in COVID fatality totals. By the researcher’s estimates, COVID-19 recorded fatalities are inflated nationwide by as much as 1600% above what they would be had the CDC used the 2003 handbooks,” stated All Concerned Citizens.

Then on April 14th, the CDC adopted additional rules exclusive for COVID-19 in violation of federal law by outsourcing data collection rule development to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), a non-profit entity, again without applying for oversight and opening opportunity for public scientific review.

On April 5th the CSTE published a position paper Standardized surveillance case definition and national notification for 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) listing 5 CDC employees as subject matter experts.

“This key document created new rules for counting probable cases as actual cases without definitive proof of infection (section VII.A1 – pages 4 & 5), new rules for contact tracing allowing contact tracers to practice medicine without a license (section VII.A3 – page 5), and yet refused to define new rules for ensuring that the same person could not be counted multiple times as a new case (section VII.B – page 7),” stated All Concerned Citizens.

By enacting these new rules exclusively for COVID-19 in violation of federal law, the research alleges that the CDC significantly inflated data that has been used by elected officials and public health officials, in conjunction with unproven projection models from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), to justify extended closures for schools, places of worship, entertainment, and small businesses leading to unprecedented emotional and economic hardships nationwide.

“A formal petition has been sent to the Department of Justice as well as all US Attorneys seeking an immediate grand jury investigation into these allegations,” All Concerned Citizens stated.

Read the full article here.

Where are the 2020-2021 Influenza Statistics? “Influenza has been renamed COVID” According to Epidemiologist

Epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski. Image source.

Daniel Payne, writing for Just the News, interviewed epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski regarding the disappearing flu statistics this year.

Dr. Knut Wittkowski is the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University. He holds two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, and one of his videos on YouTube last year had amassed over 1 million views before YouTube took it down, because he was critical of the lockdowns and its ineffectiveness on stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Just the News reports:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly influenza surveillance tracker reports that the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of Dec. 19 stands at 0.2% as measured by clinical labs. That’s compared to a cumulative 8.7% from a year before.

The weekly comparisons are even starker: This week one year ago, the positive clinical rate was 22%, where now it stands at 0.1%.

Those low numbers continue trends observed earlier in the year in which flu rates have remained at near-zero levels. The trend is not limited to the U.S. Worldwide, health authorities have all reported sharply decreased influenza levels throughout what is normally peak flu season in the northern hemisphere. Rates in the southern hemisphere were also low this year.

Where have all the flu cases gone?

Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski thinks he can answer the riddle.

“Influenza has been renamed COVID in large part,” said the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University.

“There may be quite a number of influenza cases included in the ‘presumed COVID’ category of people who have COVID symptoms (which Influenza symptoms can be mistaken for), but are not tested for SARS RNA,” Wittkowski told Just the News on Thursday.

Those patients, he argued, “also may have some SARS RNA sitting in their nose while being infected with Influenza, in which case the influenza would be ‘confirmed’ to be COVID.” (Read the full article.)

Is the CDC Hiding and Manipulating Data Regarding Overall Death Rates for 2020?

As we were nearing the end of 2020, we reported on some analysis projections for 2020 that were shaping up to have about as many total deaths for the year as previous years, based on the CDC’s own statistics. See:

Statistics Show that the Number of People who Died in the U.S. in 2020 will be the SAME as Previous Years, in Spite of COVID

A subscriber to Health Impact News recently sent me some screen shots that she allegedly saved at the end of December, 2020, from the CDC website, including a page that was reportedly available during most of 2020 tracking COVID deaths and deaths due to all causes (see above).

This page allegedly used to be at this URL: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/covid_weekly/index.htm

However, when you go this page now, you get this notice: