Florida is overcounting how many people have been tested for covid-19 and under-reporting how many tested positive, according to Florida’s former top coronavirus data scientist.
Rebekah Jones, the former Health Department geographic data scientist, was fired on May 18. Gov. Ron DeSantis said she was fired for insubordination — “she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors,” Palm Beach Post reported.
Jones said she fired was for refusing to “manipulate” covid-19 data to justify reopening Florida’s economy.
So Jones has launched her own website called FloridaCOVIDAction.com. It shows far more covid-19 information than she said the state allowed her to report as an employee on its coronavirus dashboard, which she designed.
On Monday June 15, Jones’s website showed that 85,478 people have tested positive since March 1. By comparison, the state shows 77,326 people tested positive.
Over-counting the numbers was done to benefit Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to reopen the state after two months of quarantine, Jones said.
“I decided to stop wallowing in self-pity and do something constructive, something useful with the skill set I’ve been using for so long,” Jones told the Palm Beach Post. “People have a right to know what’s going on in a straightforward nonpolitical kind of way.”
Jones said her community coronavirus dashboard uses publicly available state data that is usually buried in thousand-page reports or scattered PDF files. This includes hard-to-find information on hospital capacity provided by agencies other than the Health Department, such as the Agency for Health Care Administration.
In a break with the state, Jones includes the number of people testing positive to antibodies in the daily number of people with positive coronavirus test results, she said.
That could be a mistake, according to Dr. Terry Adirim, chairwoman of Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Integrated Biomedical Science. Antibody tests are more prone to false positives, Adirim told Palm Beach Post.
On Monday, the Department of Health reported 1,431,164 total people tested. The state’s testing tally reflects the number of tests conducted, not how many people were tested. By comparison, Jones reported 1,093,427 total people tested.
Unlike the state dashboard, Jones includes a map showing hundreds of testing sites around the state, with information including phone numbers, addresses and how to schedule an appointment.
While the state’s dashboard reports only the number of residents who have ever been hospitalized with covid-19, Jones’ includes hospitalizations and deaths of non-residents, PBP reported. It also pulls data from the Health Care Administration Agency showing the number of intensive care unit beds available per hospital.
“We weren’t allowed to really draw attention to deaths, which is why I added hospitalizations and deaths which use something we buried in a PDF but never showed on our dashboard,” Jones said. “So people can bring the humanity aspect of this to the forefront.”
A Tallahassee resident, Jones set up a GoFundMe account while she works on her dashboard.
“Florida deserves a community-based dashboard that doesn’t hide or fudge numbers,” the GoFundMe page says.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 72: Jamarlin Martin Part 2. J Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, may not be around but his energy is present in new Black politics.FBI agents and informants were used to weaken Marcus Garvey, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers — in ma ny cases for money and career advancement. How could this energy metastasize into the “New Blacks” politics in 2020? Jamarlin goes solo to discuss who is doing the trading and what is being traded to weaken the aggregate Black political position.
So far, she has raised $153,494 of a $500,000 goal.
Here are some of the messages posted by supporters on GoFundMe:
