Report Suggests CDC Manipulated COVID Death Toll

Bonner Cohen

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has a recorded death toll of over 525,000 people. National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. asks: “But is it accurate?”

The number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 may be radically inflated due to a change in policy by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that did not go through the proper channels and could be in violation of the law.

Bonner’s news analysis for The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News summarizes and explains the findings of a new peer-reviewed study of the CDC’s COVID-19 reporting procedures. These procedures “willfully violated several federal statutes, including the Data Quality Act, Paperwork Reduction Act and the Administrative Procedures Act,” Bonner writes.

According to Bonner’s analysis:

[T]he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unilaterally altered the 17-year-old process by which it calculated disease-caused fatalities, creating a special procedure for tabulating COVID-19 deaths. This, the study says, enabled the CDC to produce inaccurate data which were widely disseminated by the media and served to justify a host of coercive measures to stem the spread of the disease.

Unlike the study of the CDC’s revised process, the CDC itself acted without the benefit of peer review and did not provide an opportunity for public comment, despite this being “a major rule change.” Bonner adds:

By law, the study notes, the CDC was required to submit such a change as a proposal to the Federal Register for public comment, which the CDC failed to do.

When revising the statistical reporting of deaths, the CDC allegedly skirted federal oversight and regulation, creating an apparent conflict of interest and a “general violation of ethical standards.”

The study’s authors concluded: “It is concerning that the CDC may have willfully failed to collect, analyze and publish accurate data used by elected officials to develop public health policy for a nation in crisis.”

Dr. Jane Orient, MD, the executive director of the American Association of Surgeons and Physicians, told Bonner: “If this analysis is correct, the CDC is guilty of gross malfeasance causing devastating losses to millions, in violation of settled federal law.”

To read Bonner’s full analysis of this troubling report – “Study: CDC Manipulated COVID-19 Deaths, Violated Federal Laws” – click here.

Bonner is the co-author of the National Center report Beyond COVID-19: Blueprint for Restoring Liberty, Rebuilding the Economy, Safeguarding Public Health and Responding to Crises.” This report provides 54 policy recommendations drawn from the lessons of the current pandemic response in which “[c]ertain, measurable harm was imposed on our civil liberties, on our economy and on our health so we could reduce the less-certain public health risk of COVID-19.”



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.