{"id":510999,"date":"2021-05-15T10:20:45","date_gmt":"2021-05-15T14:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=510999"},"modified":"2021-05-15T10:20:47","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T14:20:47","slug":"media-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/media-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Wanted To Believe Florida Was Fudging COVID-19 Data, But The Story Is A Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmedia-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=510999&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1214137813.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refused to shut down his state and wreck its economy like Blue States California and New York, the media looked for any data it could to show that DeSantis was wrong and Democrats were right.<\/p>\n<p>That evidence didn\u2019t materialize, as Florida fared either better or no worse during the pandemic than states that completely shut down and ruined millions of livelihoods. So, when a \u201cwhistleblower\u201d came forward claiming she had been directed to falsify Florida\u2019s COVID-19 data, the media jumped at the opportunity to repeat her story \u2013 no questions asked. Well, no questions asked about her story, that is.<\/p>\n<p>That \u201cwhistleblower\u201d was Rebekah Jones, who helped manage Florida\u2019s COVID-19 dashboard. She claimed that higher-ups instructed her to input different data than what they received, in an effort to make Florida look like it was handling the coronavirus pandemic better than it really was. But as National Review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2021\/05\/rebekah-jones-the-covid-whistleblower-who-wasnt\/\">reported<\/a> in a lengthy and gripping takedown, Jones\u2019 claims aren\u2019t even plausible on their face, as she never handled raw data and was given a copy of the data she was supposed to input in the system. Had any fudging actually occurred, it would have occurred <em>before<\/em> it was given to Jones (and there\u2019s no evidence of any such thing). Had Jones input the numbers differently than what she was told, it would have been immediately obvious.<\/p>\n<p>Further, Jones\u2019 story changed dramatically the more she told it, from her initial claims that she was fired for merely questioning the data. The Associated Press initially <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Health\/wireStory\/ousted-florida-virus-data-curator-history-violations-70853281\">reported<\/a> that \u201cJones has not alleged any tampering with data on deaths, hospital symptom surveillance, hospitalizations for COVID-19, numbers of new confirmed cases, or overall testing rates \u2014 core elements of any assessment of the outbreak and of federal criteria for reopening.\u201d The outlet also noted that \u201cJones acknowledges Florida has been relatively transparent \u2014 for which she herself claims some credit \u2014 and relatively successful in controlling the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since that initial story, however, Jones began saying that, actually, yeah, her superiors \u2013 particularly Dr. Shamarial Roberson \u2013 had directly instructed her to \u201cdelete cases and deaths\u201d to make Florida look better. She now claims Roberson \u201casked me to go into the raw data and manually alter figures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Again, remember that Jones didn\u2019t have access to the raw data. She merely ran the dashboard. To further illustrate this point, National Review pointed out that Jones now runs her own dashboard, using the <em>same<\/em> data as the state, she simply displays it differently:<\/p>\n<p><em>Or, to put it more bluntly, she displays them\u00a0badly. When you get past all of the nonsense, what Jones is ultimately saying is that the State of Florida\u2014and, by extension, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2014has not processed its data in the same way that she would if she were in charge. But, frankly, why would it? Again, Jones isn\u2019t an epidemiologist, and her objections, while compelling to the sort of low-information political obsessive she is so good at attracting, betray a considerable ignorance of the material issues. In order to increase the numbers in Florida\u2019s case count, Jones counts positive antibody tests as cases. But that\u2019s unsound, given that (a) those positives include people who have already had COVID-19 or who have had the vaccine, and (b) Jones is unable to avoid double-counting people who have taken both an antibody test\u00a0and\u00a0a COVID test that came back positive, because the state correctly refuses to publish the names of the people who have taken those tests. Likewise, Jones claims that Florida is hiding deaths because it does not in\u00adclude nonresidents in its headline numbers. But Florida\u00a0does\u00a0report nonresident deaths; it just reports them\u00a0separately, as every state does, and as the CDC\u2019s guidelines demand. Jones\u2019s most recent claim is that Florida\u2019s \u201cexcess death\u201d number is suspicious. But that, too, has been rigorously debunked by pretty much everyone who understands what \u201cexcess deaths\u201d means in an epidemiological context\u2014including by the CDC; by Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health; by Lauren Rossen, a statistician at the CDC\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics; and, most notably, by Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who, having gone to the trouble of making a video explaining calmly why the talking point was false, was then bullied off Twitter by Jones and her followers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Of course, none of this has stopped Democrats and their media supporters from pushing Jones\u2019 claims as fact in an effort to shame Florida and DeSantis. Jones is painted as a martyr, even though her personnel file shows she crashed Florida\u2019s COVID-19 dashboard because she was reprimanded for releasing health-department data and speaking on behalf of her employer without permission. Jones went so far as to lock everyone but herself out of the dashboard when she crashed it. She wasn\u2019t even fired for this, because Florida\u2019s Department of Health (FDOH) showed almost infinite patience with her and tried to de-escalate her increasingly bad behavior before it finally fired her for sending a mass email claiming she was no longer assigned to the dashboard for refusing to manipulate data. She said this despite the documented truth: She was an erratic and problematic employee, a reputation that had followed her from previous jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t expect the media to give up the narrative that Florida\u2019s COVID-19 data was falsified any time soon, no matter what the evidence against Jones may be.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refused to shut down his state and wreck its economy like Blue States California and New York, the media looked for any data it &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2278217,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1214137813.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Media Wanted To Believe Florida Was Fudging COVID-19 Data, But The Story Is A Fraud","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1214137813.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Media Wanted To Believe Florida Was Fudging COVID-19 Data, But The Story Is A Fraud","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}