A frequent phenomenon of our occasions is the flurry over an alleged scandal that on examination seems to be false. The newest case is the declare that Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis
manipulated Covid knowledge.
Mr. DeSantis turned public-health enemy primary by defying the left’s lockdown consensus early within the pandemic. When former state well being division worker
Rebekah Jones
claimed she was fired for refusing to fudge state Covid knowledge to assist the state’s reopening in spring 2020, nationwide and native media shops reported her allegations as reality.
“Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data,” NPR reported. After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant of her dwelling, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “sent the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup” the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorialized.
But in keeping with the Governor’s workplace, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”
Police stated they searched her dwelling due to a knowledge breach traced to her dwelling IP handle. She was charged with a felony for accessing and downloading confidential well being division knowledge, together with private info of staff. She has pleaded not responsible.
Now the Florida Department of Health Office of Inspector General has exonerated Mr. DeSantis. The IG interviewed greater than a dozen individuals who labored with state Covid knowledge, together with Ms. Jones’s supervisors. None corroborated her claims.
Some stated she had informed them she was pressured to change Covid case and loss of life counts, however her allegations didn’t make sense to them, not least as a result of she didn’t have entry to the uncooked knowledge to take action. Ms. Jones, a geographer by coaching who beforehand labored on hurricane monitoring methods, merely assisted with the Covid knowledge’s on-line dashboard.
“If the complainant or other DOH staff were to have falsified COVID-19 data on the dashboard, the dashboard would then not have matched the data in the corresponding final daily report,” the IG defined, including that “such a discrepancy” would certainly have been detected by Bureau of Epidemiology workers, researchers or the media. The IG discovered no fact to any of Ms. Jones’s accusations.
One cause so many Americans don’t belief the media is as a result of they’ve found out that partisan narratives drive an excessive amount of reporting. We want they had been improper.
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Appeared within the June 4, 2022, print version as ‘Vindication for Ron DeSantis.’
Source: www.wsj.com”