Why did Colorado stonewall on documents related to state Covid death count?


Grand Co., Colorado coroner Brenda Bock questioned the Covid-19 death count

The following is a news analysis.

This week on Full Measure, I investigate the way states counted and, sometimes, miscounted Covid deaths.

Watch the Full Measure investigation here.

I started my research in Grand County, Colorado where the coroner, Brenda Bock, had flagged a murder-suicide that somehow ended up on the state’s Covid death count.

That wasn’t the only eyebrow raising example.

One thing Bock and other coroners who discovered such anomalies couldn’t figure out was who, exactly, was calling the shots.

Who was it who, apparently, aggressively sought out the name of any deceased person– even before the death certificate was signed– cross-referencing the name against a database of positive Covid tests, and adding the death to the list of Covid deaths even when it may have had nothing to do with Covid?

To try to get more information, I filed a simple public records request for information in Colorado. State law requires the information to be provided within three days.

Many weeks later, Colorado Public Health officials were unlawfully ignoring the request, as well as my many follow up queries. Likewise, when I reached out to other state officials for assistance in making sure public records law was followed, those contacts were also ignored. This included multiple outreach to the governor’s office and numerous state health authorities.

Finally, I hired a lawyer to pursue the records request. This is too often the outcome at the federal level, as well. Public officials treat the documents and materials that they collect on our behalf, that we own and have a right to see, as if they are their own proprietary private property to be withheld at will.

These officials know that for members of the public and press to hire a lawyer is expensive and time-consuming; suing in court over a public records violation even more so. And these officials know there is almost never any punishment or repercussion when they break the law and improperly withhold records.

My lawyer shook loose some of the documents, which you can read here.

One of the outrages, though, is that Colorado improperly blacked out its communications with other states, such as California and New York, when it came to talking about the Covid death count.

It appears Colorado officials also failed to turn over many documents that we know would likely exist discussing various matters and complaints related to the Covid death count.

But one small sliver of information Colorado did turn over shows that health officials were none too happy with Brenda Bock, the Grand County coroner who was questioning the state’s death count methodology.

In an email, Ron Engels — at the time, a Gilpin County Commissioner — wrote the head of Colorado’s health department Jill Ryan, and alerted her about Bock’s questions (immediately determining, apparently, that they were political in nature). Engels is “involved with several state agencies, including the State Board of Health… and the Coroner’s Training and Standards Board.”

Engels forwards Ryan the query Bock had sent to the state coroners’ association in which Bock asked about standing up to “get the practice” of miscounting Covid deaths “stopped.”

“…someone might want to look into the situation before it becomes a media circus.”

Ron Engels re: Bock’s questions about Colorado’s Covid-19 death count

Engels tells Ryan that “somebody might want to look into the situation before it becomes a media circus.”

Ryan responds by explaining that it’s a “nuanced” situation and “This is routinely how death surveillance is conducted.”

Engels answers back. “[I]t sounds like x ok conservative Coroner Bock is thinking of creating a media stink. Maybe someone from [Colorado Coroners Association] could make an attempt to explain what you did below before there is yet another thing the naysayers can grab onto?”

Ryan offers to speak to the coroners’ group. Engels signs off with, “Thanks for all your support during my political career.”

Read the emails below.


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24 thoughts on “Why did Colorado stonewall on documents related to state Covid death count?”

  1. Hello Sharyl!
    Love your bulldog tenacity and focus on issues the MSM either cover up or refuse to cover at all. You and Lara are the only two investigative truth-seekers I don’t bother to fact-check or corroborate (OK, maybe Glenn Greenwald also) – I accept at face value. Hey! I’m an old guy and and my runway ain’t gettin’ any longer. Time is not my friend. However, your Covid coverage casts me a bit adrift. I get the ‘crime’ but there seems to be no indication of the motive. What exactly is the motive for these players to over-report Covid deaths? I assume it’s ‘money’ but how does that work? THAT seems to be the 800 lb gorilla in this saga but it is strangely missing from your story. What’s up?

    1. That too is my question. If numbers are inflated across the country is the motive money only? It’s obvious that the majority vaccinated are seniors thus falling into the Medicare coverage. Again another reason for guaranteed financial payout. I have heard doctors say they are thankful for Medicare because it keeps them on a regular income. Seniors are always in need of some medical treatment surgeries and testing being big payouts.

    2. Agree…exposing the “crime” is really only half the story. Financial incentives are likely a big part of the motive, but I’d be shocked if it’s just about pure monetary profit. As we’ve all seen, this “pandemic” has paved the way for an expansion of authoritarian power in the US and other western nations (Canada and Australia, in particular) that we would never have dreamed possible a decade ago. Escalation of case and death counts has afforded the perfect cover for our political, technical, and media elites to control our livelihoods and manipulate the free flow of our information under the pretense of “protecting” us. What began at the “local level” has now led to Pfizer, Moderna, et, al. being paid billions of dollars to produce ineffective vaccines that governments use to “protect” their citizens against a virus having a sub-1% mortality rate, a rate which is likely even lower given the subject of Sharyl’s reporting. And many Americans are now being forced to “choose” between being vaccinated or remaining employed (my sister-in-law was recently fired for refusing to be vaccinated, and has now lost her health insurance). So, extra money for local hospital administrators to treat inflated COVID cases in the early stages of the “pandemic” was probably just “seed money” for jump starting the far more lucrative enterprise of elitist, global power-mongering. Apologies if that all sounds a little too conspiratorial, but all these circumstances have aligned much too conveniently to be considered merely…circumstantial.

  2. It’s not just the death count. Denton County Texas Commissioners met with a CDC epidemiologist in May 2020 and were told to multiply positive PCR cases by up to 16 to account for suspected contacts. Denton shows 10,000 more active cases than the larger neighboring Collin County. No accountability. Deaths in this county in managed by the coroners office in Ft Worth. Requests for disclosure of the total deaths from all causes for the past few years, to gauge the size of the epidemic, has not been released.

  3. The whole mess with the lies, immorality and corruption of our elected and public officials is from people electing immoral people like them, because they are easy to manipulate to give freebies, instead of electing moral people who will do what’s right,

      1. Who wants to run for office nowadays–the people who know they will benefit finanially, and the people who think like the other crooked politicians. The few good politicians are being forced out with the help of the radical leftist media. We are becoming a communist country.

  4. The big question is who added these people to the database ? Was it authorized ? What system, rule or law required it ? Someone has to know who and why this was done. As usual no accountability.
    I wonder how much information is wrong, missing and not reported properly ? No wonder people who haven’t been vaccinated are so skeptical. Yet CNN, msNBC, NYT, WP, ABC, CBS, NBC just keep selling the trust us we are the government line. At what point do they decide to do some actual reporting like Sharyl ? I saw a doctor from Johns Hopkins on Watters show last night basically agreeing that nobody seems to know whats going on and the are reporting false information to the public. Now the FDA is saying the boosters are not necessary for people under 65 without underlying medical conditions. Yet Biden and company has already purchased them without consulting with the FDA first. How long will it be before the force the FDA to do the wrong thing ? Thanks Sharyl for asking the questions.

    1. There is no way in a sane world where a murder suicide would be counted as covid unless there was a deliberate attempt to artificially inflate the numbers….supposedly flu deaths have been way down since the “pandemic”……here is another avenue to further inflate covid deaths…..

      Like many I have my opinions but i like to keep an open mind reading as much as i can as regards covid however whey you see articles such as this it makes it awfully hard to trust anything the government or media says….

      I am at the point where i think that anything the media tells you is 180 degrees from the truth……

  5. Ms Attkisson:

    Why have I never seen HIV/AIDS shown as a comorbidity?

    Covid-19 kills people with weak immune systems….
    So what would it do to the narrative if 40% or more of covid deaths were people with HIV/AIDS????

    Yours to scoop…

  6. This whole thing is a government marketing scam to enrich BIG PHARMA and the OLIGARCHS…!! I do not believe a single thing the government has to say about anything…!! Oh, and when are we going to start calling this “thing” what it is: A bioweapon……a “culling of the herd”….??..!!

  7. Your story on this support the hearsay on it actually happening here in Wisconsin as well. I’m no investigative journalist and I’m thankful you are and DO the job. I’m embarrassed by the main stream media which obviously have gotten cushy getting paid to read a damn script!

  8. The “talking heads” don’t deliver any truth, they are propaganda readers and that is all. They are paid off with extremely high salaries to ignore the content of what they read to us as “news”. Look in their eyes, there is nobody home.

  9. Thank God for Sharyl and the VERY few like her. I finished reading “Slanted” last night and feel a true affinity with Sharyl and have great respect for her.
    I’m 88 years old and was born at night, but not last night. She tells the TRUTH.

    Go after the idiots, morons and liars now occupying the WH and the agencies connected with it.

  10. The Fatality Rate in US covid deaths today is less than 1%. (It is, in fact 0.21% that anyone can calculate by Worldometers daily tracking — just divide total covid deaths by US population).

    To count EVERY death with covid present is to move all numbers into that 0.21% death rate, BUT we know that not everyone who gets covid dies, Covid-19 is not 100% mortal. In fact, only a small percentage of those infected die. Therefore, by this reporting of Ms Atkisson (and others to come) the ACTUAL covid death rate in this country is even smaller than the 0.21%. We know this by ligical deduction.

    Back in January I recorded this death rate:
    Jan 30, ’21 Covid Death Rate USA
    —————————————————
    Country Population Deaths Fatality rate
    USA 332,130,000 447,869 0.13%
    —————————————————-

    Could it be that the so-called rise in the “reported” covid death rate here in USA is being influenced by efforts to say that every death with covid present should be called a “covid death?” Doing so defies logic and thwarts efforts of science to really understand a disease and it’s social/health impact.

    1. The information that i have seen as regards average age of covid deaths is 78 for the US and over 80 for most European countries (86 for Italy which has the second oldest population after Japan)……

      Mortality thus closely follows natural mortality (the older/sicker you are the greater chance of death)……

      Pushing for mandatory vaccines is sick especially in the case of children…..

  11. I am curious to know if there are any detailed analyses of changes in death counts from 2019/2020 from which we can extrapolate
    1. How many “excess” deaths year over year (presumably accounted for mainly by COVID)
    2. Any statistically significant DECREASES in deaths from other reasons like cancer, heart disease, flu, etc (due to these deaths being falsely attributed to COVID)

    Seems like a simple way to quantify the extent if any of excess COVID death counts

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