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Florida's Government May Have Ignored and Withheld Data About Covid-19 Cases (tampabay.com) 269

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Documents filed by Florida's health department now "confirm two of the core aspects" of a whistleblower complaint filed by fired data manager Rebekah Jones, the Miami Herald reported Friday. "Sworn affidavits from Department of Health leaders acknowledge Jones' often-denied claim that she was told to remove data from public access after questions from the Miami Herald."

And they also report a position statement from the department (filed August 17th) acknowledging something even morning damning. While a team of epidemiologists at the Department of Health had developed data for the state's plan to re-open — their findings were never actually incorporated into that plan.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for governor Ron DeSantis still insisted to the Herald that "every action taken by Governor DeSantis was data-driven and deliberate."

From the article: But when the Herald requested the data, data analysis, or data model related to reopening under Florida's open records law, the governor's office responded that there were no responsive records... Secrecy was a policy. Staffers were told not to put anything about the pandemic response into writing, according to four Department of Health employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity... Emails and texts reviewed by the Herald show the governor's office worked in coordination with Department of Health "executive leadership" to micromanage everything about the department's public response to the pandemic, from information requests from the press to specific wording and color choice on the Department of Health website and data dashboard. They slow-walked responses to questions on important data points and public records, initially withholding information and data on deaths and infections at nursing homes, state prisons and schools, forcing media organizations to file or threaten lawsuits. Important information that had previously been made public was redacted from medical examiner accounts of COVID-19 fatalities.

At one point the state mischaracterized the extent of Florida's testing backlog by over 50 percent — skewing the information about how many people were getting sick each day — by excluding data from private labs, a fact that was only disclosed in response to questions from the press. Emails show that amid questions about early community spread, data on Florida's earliest potential cases — which dated back to late December 2019 — were hidden from the public by changing "date range of data that was available on the dashboard."

Department of Health staffers interviewed by the Herald described a "hyper-politicized" communications department that often seemed to be trying to match the narrative coming from Washington.

The Herald's article also "delved into the details of the department's operation," writes DevNull127 : For example, the whistleblower complaint of Rebekah Jones quotes the state's deputy health secretary as telling her pointedly that "I once had a data person who said to me, 'you tell me what you want the numbers to be, and I'll make it happen.'"

Or, as Jones later described that interaction to her mother, "They want me to put misleading data up to support that dumb f***'s plan to reopen. And more people are gonna die because [of] this and that's not what I agreed to."

Last Friday the health department's Office of the Inspector General announced they'd found "reasonable cause" to open an investigation into decisions and actions by Department of Health leadership that could "represent an immediate injury to public health."

Meanwhile, Florida officials confirmed Friday night that their health department "will no longer update its Covid-19 dashboard and will suspend daily case and vaccine reports," according to the New York Times. "Officials will instead post weekly updates, becoming the first U.S. state to move to such an infrequent publishing schedule."

Jones had been using that data to continue running her own online dashboard, and posted Friday in lieu of data that the dashboard's operation would now be interrupted "as I work to reformat the website to adjust for these changes...." But she promised to keep trying to help the people of Florida "in whatever capacity I can with the limitations the Department of Health is now putting on public access to this vital health information."
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Florida's Government May Have Ignored and Withheld Data About Covid-19 Cases

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  • "May have..." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @09:36AM (#61457048) Journal

    Being generous are we?

    • Re:"May have..." (Score:4, Informative)

      by Celarnor ( 835542 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @09:45AM (#61457062)
      That was my first thought as well. The wording makes it seem like this is some new thing that's just being uncovered, when really anyone paying attention at the time figured this out for themselves from Jones' statement...
    • It looks more ass-covering than outright malice, but this is excellent work by the Herald of showing exactly how much time and effort goes in to keeping up appearances versus doing anything useful- and of course, this can have bad results, especially the parts with the underreported cases.

      I mean, for people who trust the government to tell the truth, a reasonably dubious position at this pointâ¦

      • Baghdad Bob [wikipedia.org] was their role model.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Somebody is protecting these murderous assholes.

    • Being generous are we?

      It's Florida. Other's being generous is really all they have.

  • by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @10:10AM (#61457116)
    Reached for comment, a spokesperson for governor Ron DeSantis still insisted to the Herald that "every action taken by Governor DeSantis was data-driven and deliberate." Yes, it certainly was data driven. Poll numbers, number of calls from the president, times stigginit to the libs, tax assessments, etc.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't understand the power Trump has over people. Trump will use people and throw them away when no longer needed. Trump even tweeted that Ted Cruz's wife was ugly and Cruz still has a brown nose from the ass kissing.

      • Trump is gone, but DeSantis is still in office. Expect people to call for him to run for President. He may even get an endorsement from Trump. Not sure if I would want that endorsement, but hey, he may get it anyway.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Ah, so everybody that died needlessly as result of his actions was deliberately killed. Got it.

    • So, in the end, did it work? Where is Florida nationally on the deaths/million citizens rankings?

      According to what I saw some of DeSantis' critics cite elsewhere under this story, it looks like Florida ranks #26.

  • by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @10:39AM (#61457186) Journal
    Everything DeSantis does is about keeping the peons working at slave wages for the powers that control this state. His latest is ending the federal unemployment payments early. Wage growth at the low levels as people realize they were often working for nothing after subtracting costs threatens the state's tourist industry profits. They therefore must be driven back to desperation. He also overrode Key West's local vote to cut back on tourist ships allowed to dock at their port that have been overwhelming their community in the past. The will of the people is only meaningful to him when it fits his agenda.
  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @10:40AM (#61457194)

    Who would have thought that a Republican sycophant would deliberately order data be manipulated to correspond to a false narrative and ignore science. It's unheard of.

  • Emails and texts reviewed by the Herald show the governor's office worked in coordination with Department of Health "executive leadership" to micromanage everything about the department's public response to the pandemic, from information requests from the press to specific wording and color choice on the Department of Health website and data dashboard.

    So basically every manager everywhere who has to justify their existence somehow?

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @10:45AM (#61457212)
    You live in a post truth society. About 45% of the population only consumes media from one of the three major news networks: Fox News, OAN or Newsmax. Majority of local stations are now owned and operated by people who run content identical to those three major networks. And talk radio has been dominated by Fox News style commentary since the early 2000s. We're past even manufactured consent this point. I mean Florida's four retirees, the sort of people who this would hurt the most. And DeSantas' approval ratings are sky high. He is very likely going to get a real shot at the White House.
    • Were you happy when the only news outlets were NBC, ABC, and CBS? Are you even old enough to remember that?

  • Is there any law that forbids public servants from hiding information if by hiding that information it can reasonably be concluded that hundreds of people died? In my unqualified opinion, hiding the number of covid deaths and covid infections could lead to people taking inappropriate risks and more spreading of the illness. Should that not be illegal? It seems that some people should go to jail if they caused the deaths of hundreds of people.

    • Possibly however that would require the current state government to do something about it. Unlikely until the current governor is out of office of the current Attorney General gets a backbone.
  • Not long ago both joined a sudden wave of articles saying that of course Jones was making everything up.

  • Seems to me that, bottom line here is that tens or hundreds of thousands - maybe even millions of people - made decisions to do things like walk around in Florida without a mask, to not social-distance, to attend parties, Spring Break or other social events, all based on information that may or may not have been distorted and may or may not have been distorted at the direction of senior elected officials who may or may not be close to or include Governor DeSantis.

    Depending on whether those connections ar
  • by k2r ( 255754 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @02:49PM (#61457882)

    > every action taken by Governor DeSantis was data-driven and deliberate

    Withholding data looks *very* data-driven and deliberate to me, so that‘s not a lie

  • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Saturday June 05, 2021 @03:42PM (#61457956)

    This is why governor De Santis, railing about the CDC blocking the re-opening of the cruise ships, is astonishingly disingenuous. Since the Florida department of public health was skewing their data to hide the extent of COVID-19 in Florida to protect their tourism industries, it's reasonable for the CDC to be very cautious about re-opening cruise ships which could foster COVID-19 among passengers and crew. It's compounded by that governor's refusal to permit such ships to dock to get treatment for ill passengers aboard:

            https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

    This kind of re-activation of tourism popular among older, retired people puts them at risk of treatment like the M.S. St. Louis, denied docking at Miami due to the Jewish refugees on board in 1939. Some where accepted in other nations, but many were forced to return to Germany and died in the death camps. That is the kind of leadership De Santis displayed last year, and _now_ he wants to re-establish the cruise lines so soon after the vaccines have become generally available? Wait until we've achieved herd immunity, at approximately 95% successfully vaccinated, to re-open such likely infection carriers.

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