The Weird Saga of the Woman Who Supposedly Refused to Alter Florida's Covid-19 Data
Politics
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters Wednesday that the woman who designed Florida’s acclaimed covid-19 dashboard and was later fired was removed from her post, not for whistleblowing on alleged attempts to skew the state’s covid data, but rather insubordination—and, to make matters more complicated, is separately under “active criminal charges” for sexual cyber harassment. It’s unclear what story is accurate, but it’s certainly a clusterfuck.
On Tuesday, Florida Today reported that Rebekah Jones, the architect behind the dashboard—a publicly accessible database tracking the covid-19’s spread, casualties, and testing—was removed from her post at the Florida Department of Health. Jones told CBS12 in West Palm Beach, Florida that her termination was due to her refusal to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
Jones claimed that, in recent weeks, the database experienced a number of crashes and that data would go missing. In a cryptic email to colleagues and database subscribers, Jones warned, “I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months.”
The implication was that the new team would be less forthcoming about data, which worried researchers. But according to DeSantis, Jones said she was misinterpreted. DeSantis’s office released an email from Jones dated May 16 with the subject title “uhm… uh oh?” In it, Jones writes, “…what I meant when I said don’t expect the same level of accessibility is that they are busy and can’t answer every single email they get right away, and that it was ridiculous that I managed to do it in the first place.” Later, she added, “Is this one of those stupid things I shouldn’t have said?”
The email does not negate Jones’ claim to CBS12 that she was pushed out for refusing to tweak data. But DeSantis seems determined to make Jones a non-issue, starting with her credentials, and ending with her criminal record.
“She’s not a data scientist,” DeSantis told reporters in Orlando while Vice President Mike Pence awkwardly stood at his side. “She’s somebody that’s got a degree in journalism, communication, and geography.”
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