Let's see DeSantis' response to the death data manipulation from his administration... Florida Gov. DeSantis: State Didn’t Manipulate COVID-19 Death Data Before Election https://news.yahoo.com/florida-gov-desantis-state-didn-200052145.html Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office is denying a suggestion in a South Florida newspaper report that the state manipulated coronavirus data to present more favorable death numbers in the lead-up to November’s presidential election. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Tuesday reported that on Oct. 24 – ten days before the presidential election – Florida temporarily stopped including backlogged COVID-19 deaths in its daily tally of coronavirus fatalities. Two weeks after the election, the state again started consistently reporting the backlogged deaths, which are more than a month old. By not including backlogged deaths for that roughly three-week period, an “astonishing pattern” emerged, resulting in a “mysterious gap” in COVID-19 deaths, according to the paper. The daily death numbers “publicized as Floridians turned out for early voting an Election Day were significantly lower than they otherwise would have been,” according to the Sun-Sentinel. The story’s lead paragraph says the pattern “suggests the state manipulated a backlog of unrecorded fatalities, presenting more favorable death counts in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election.” DeSantis’ office pointed at a late-October change in the process of reviewing suspected COVID-19 deaths to explain the slowdown of reporting backlogged deaths for a few weeks in late October and early November. “We absolutely deny that presidential politics played any role in the timing or substance of the COVID-19 review process,” Fred Piccolo Jr., a spokesman for DeSantis, told National Review. In an email, Dana Banker, the Sun-Sentinel’s managing editor, said, “we reached out repeatedly to the state and got no response, and we clearly noted the possibility that the review triggered the pause. … We will continue to aggressively cover the state’s response to the pandemic, and we hope the state will begin responding to questions that are of significant public concern.” The updated review process was announced on the heels of a mid-October investigation by the state House of Representatives that suggested the state’s coronavirus death tally may be inflated by as much as ten percent due to reporting errors by physicians and medical examiners. On October 21, Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees and the Florida Department of Health announced a more thorough review process for suspected coronavirus deaths. In a press release, the Department of Health noted that the daily fatality data reported to the state from its 67 counties “consistently presents confusion,” because it not only includes the most recent deaths, but also backlogged deaths from months past. The state also was struggling with inconsistent data dumps that on some days would make it appear that there was a large spike in fatalities when actually there was no spike. “Following the Florida House of Representative’s investigation into COVID-19 deaths, the Florida State Surgeon General and the Florida Department of Health initiated a re-examination and review process to give COVID-19 death reporting a thorough vetting and ensure we were getting the most accurate data regarding the health impacts of the virus,” Jason Mahon, a spokesman for the Department of Health, said in a prepared statement responding to the Sun-Sentinel’s report. “The accuracy of data is critical as Florida continues to provide unprecedented transparency on all aspects of the pandemic.” Early voting was already well under way and millions of Floridians had already cast ballots by the time the state changed the review process and temporarily stopped including backlogged deaths in its daily tallies. The Sun-Sentinel did note in its story that the updated COVID-19 death review process was announced three days before the “mysterious gap” in coronavirus deaths appeared. None of the “multiple state officials” reporters spoke to for the story would answer questions about the data, the newspaper reported. “Thus the state’s intent in manipulating the data remains unclear,” the Sun-Sentinel reported. “It’s possible the Florida Department of Health paused reporting of backlogged deaths as part of its new policy on reviewing them. Whatever the intent, the change led to more favorable death trends as the election approached.” With its 29 electoral votes, President Donald Trump was clearly desperate to win in Florida, which he ultimately did. During a mid-October rally in Ocala, Trump joked that if he lost Florida on Election Day, he would “find a way” to fire DeSantis. DeSantis has long been a loyal ally of Trump’s, whose endorsement in 2018 gave the then-little-known congressman an edge in Florida’s Republican primary race for governor. In many ways, DeSantis’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic mirrored Trump’s. In a recent investigation, the Sun-Sentinel accused DeSantis and his administration of engaging in a “pattern of secrecy and spin” throughout the pandemic. Among the accusations, DeSantis and his administration: refused to release details about the state’s first suspected coronavirus case and denied the virus was spreading in March when evidence indicated it was; withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes; and brushed aside scientists and doctors who advocated conventional approaches to fighting the virus, according to the newspaper. Piccolo, the governor’s spokesman, told the Sun-Sentinel that DeSantis was not spinning anything, but rather was sticking to a fact-based message that would save the most lives. “The governor has been consistent since the beginning of the pandemic,” Piccolo told the paper. “Wash hands, maintain social distance, wear a mask, etc. But he’s also adapted to the data as it becomes available.” “He acted quickly to save thousands of nursing home residents. He knew of drugs in the pipeline and was ready to act for Florida when he knew they were coming online. He’s been consistent even as the pandemic has become political.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s mis-communicator in chief DeSantis is failing Florida by hiding information https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinio...0201220-3oly4x7u3bdsvp4qgiyilwsjpi-story.html Putting the best possible spin on it, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a terrible communicator. Put more clearly, DeSantis is failing our state by hiding information, dodging questions and downplaying the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic as it escalates its deadly march across Florida. DeSantis has been off-pitch since the coronavirus first hit our shores — denying community spread, spinning happy talk about scarce protective gear, and shielding data about nursing home infections, hospital bed capacity and the lack of contact tracing. But in the weeks before and since the 2020 presidential election, he’s gotten worse. Consider: The Sun Sentinel reported this week that 10 days before the Nov. 3 election, Florida’s coronavirus death count dropped significantly, presenting a more favorable picture as people headed to the polls. It happened after DeSantis ordered an additional review of every COVID death certificate. Like President Trump, his mentor, he suggests that the death toll has been made to appear worse than it is. He says the number includes a COVID-infected motorcyclist who died in a crash, for example. But the medical examiner who reviewed that case told our reporters the governor is wrong, that the motorcyclist was never included in the tally. To be included, federal guidelines require COVID-19 to be the cause of death or a “significant” contributing factor. The death count has since returned to pre-election levels. DeSantis refuses to say who is performing the recount, but in early November, Ohio sports blogger and anti-masker Kyle Lamb, who writes for a site that claims Florida has over-counted COVID-19 deaths, said he was hired to analyze Florida cases. The governor’s office also gave Jennifer Cabrera, a conservative blogger, exclusive access to COVID-19 death certificates for an article that claims Florida’s death count is exaggerated. DeSantis refuses to talk to South Florida mayors who want to enforce local mask mandates and penalize businesses that pack in customers. Mayors tell us that unlike former Gov. Rick Scott, DeSantis has never convened a conference call with them. DeSantis also continues to ignore letters from members of Florida’s congressional delegation — both Democrats and Republicans — about the pandemic. DeSantis has hidden and belittled recent warnings from the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which says Florida must do more to slow the pandemic’s second surge, such as wearing masks and closing indoor spaces at bars and restaurants. He released some reports last week, but only after this newspaper and the Orlando Sentinel filed suit. DeSantis effectively communicates what hewon’tdo to stop the spread of COVID-19 — no face mask order, no limits on indoor dining, no closing schools, no penalties for businesses that let people closely congregate — but he has yet to say what hewilldo. Public health experts trace the start of Florida’s skyrocketing case count to his Sept. 25 order that prohibits local governments from enforcing their local public health orders. DeSantis has hosted public discussions with contrarian doctors who oppose lockdowns and mask-wearing, and embrace the idea of “herd immunity,” which means letting the coronavirus spread rapidly among less vulnerable people, while isolating the most vulnerable. If DeSantis has done anything to isolate the most vulnerable in support of this strategy, he’s kept that hidden, too. DeSantis has walked out of press conferences without taking questions and ducked out of the Legislature’s swearing-in ceremony to avoid waiting reporters. He remained so quiet for weeks after the election that people questioned whether he was in quarantine with the coronavirus. On the rare occasions when he does take questions, things can go off the rails quickly, as in Tampa last week when a reporter used the word “raid” to describe armed state agents serving a search warrant on the home of a fired Florida Department of Health analyst. DeSantis accused his questioner of “editorializing,” abruptly ended the press conference and stormed out of the room. His outburst overshadowed some positive news: the arrival of $23 million in federal CARES Act money for much-needed mental health and substance abuse services. DeSantis began his post-election silence after appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, where he urged citizens to lobby lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Michigan to override the election results and declare Donald Trump the winner, a recklessly divisive action that both states rejected. When Florida reporters sought an explanation, the governor buttoned up. His spokesman said DeSantis wasn’t hiding from the media, simply taking a few weeks away from the press to focus on getting the vaccine to Florida. When Florida’s Pfizer vaccine shipment came up short, DeSantis suggested that one dose of the two-dose vaccine could be enough,an idea he got from aWall Street Journalop-ed.ANew England Journal of Medicine report says the vaccine’s efficacy is 52% after one dose, 95% after the second. Given public distrust about the vaccine, the governor’s one-dose suggestion was akin to Trump’s suggestion that bleach might work against COVID-19. Irresponsible. Never have we heard DeSantis admit a mistake. Rarely have we heard him express empathy for those who’ve been infected, placed on a ventilator or died. He talks in terms of numbers, not people — people with real names like Christine and Earl, Doris and Stuart, Adrian and Shannon, Thom and Jose, and tomorrow, perhaps your name, too. DeSantis has bragged about Florida’s death toll being lower than other states. With more than 20,400 of our neighbors dead from the coronavirus, our governor has nothing to brag about. Finally, DeSantis has refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election. When asked Monday if he accepted the Electoral College’s certified results, he said, “It’s not for me to do.” On Tuesday, he lamented that Florida is no longer a phone call away from getting what it needs. DeSantis fails to grasp that communication is a two-way street. Perhaps Florida would keep its place in line if he would pick up the phone and congratulate the president-elect. For just as Biden has said he will be president for all Americans, DeSantis is supposed to be governor for all Floridians. And we need a working relationship with the White House. New infections in Florida this week matched the pandemic’s peak in mid-July. Hospitalizations are rising. So is the test positivity rate. Close to 1.2 million Floridians have been touched by this disease, which if not fatal, can carry long-term consequences. It’s time for DeSantis to stop downplaying the severity and communicate more effectively. It used to be tradition for Florida’s governor to hold an end-of-year roundtable discussion with the media, to review the preceding 12 months and anticipate the future. After this sad and stressful year, DeSantis should restore this tradition and talk to us straight. For despite what’s been said, no journalist we know delights in reporting the escalating case count and the deaths of Meryl and Frank, Elfriede and Dennard, Joyce and Ralph, James and Ron, Robert and Alice, and perhaps tomorrow, your name, too.
"DeSantis for the win" -- the discovery phase will expose his administration edition Data Scientist Rebekah Jones Files Lawsuit After 'Sham' Armed Raid On Her Home https://www.newsweek.com/rebekah-jones-lawsuit-armed-raid-1556328 Data scientist Rebekah Jones is suing the commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and two other agents after an armed raid at her home earlier this month. Jones helped develop Florida's COVID-19 dashboard, but was fired from the Florida Department of Health (DOH) in May. Officials said her termination was due to insubordination, but she has alleged it came after she refused to manipulate the state's coronavirus data to make the state's outbreak appear less severe and justify lifting lockdown restrictions. She has since publicly questioned the accuracy of the state's figures and been a vocal critic of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' response to the coronavirus pandemic. Agents investigating whether Jones improperly accessed a statewide government messaging system used for emergency alerts served the search warrant on Jones' Tallahassee home on December 7. Jones posted a 30-second clip of the raid on Twitter, where it quickly went viral, and accused DeSantis of orchestrating it to "intimidate scientists and get back at me, while trying to get to my sources." The FDLE later released body camera video showing officers removing Jones, her husband and young children from their home before seizing her belongings. Jones is now suing FDLE commissioner Rick Swearingen, FDLE agent Noel Pratts and another agent, alleging the raid was carried out by the agency to "ingratiate itself" to DeSantis and silence her. Her complaint, filed in Florida's Second Judicial Circuit and obtained by Newsweek, also alleged the search warrant had been "obtained in bad faith" and "with no legitimate or clear purpose." Pratts is the officer in charge of the investigation into Jones while the other agent, listed only as John Doe, was one of the officers involved in the raid. Jones is seeking damages and relief from the three defendants for violating her First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and state law, according to the complaint. Agents entered Jones' home "with guns drawn, terrorizing her family," the complaint says. "They were there to execute a search warrant for her electronics devices; however the basis of the warrant was a sham to punish [Jones] for her protected speech." The complaint alleges that Jones was fired for refusing to falsify statistics on the COVID-19 dashboard she created for the DOH. The firing "captured a great deal of media attention nationally and in Florida, much of it negative toward" DeSantis, who the complaint adds is "widely believed to have had a hand in the firing." DeSantis publicly denounced Jones "in the most vitriolic and vituperative manner" on a number of occasions—something the complaint argues any state official including Swearingen and Pratts would be aware of. The complaint also argues that the COVID-19 dashboard Jones set up after her firing as a transparent alternative to the government's tracker has infuriated DeSantis because it "exposes the ongoing falsification, suppression, and misleading that are salient features of the State's data reporting about COVID-19. The message that led to the raid on Jones' home was sent on November 10 and urged DOH employees "to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don't have to be a part of this. Be a hero." The complaint denies Jones wrote or sent the message. Pratts in an affidavit said the message had been traced to Jones' IP address "through the use of investigative resources," but the complaint says those resources have not been specified. The complaint also argues that Pratts made no mention of the possibility that Jones' IP address could have been "spoofed" and adds that an IP address is not a reliable enough indicator to justify a search warrant. "Nor did he consider how unlikely is the notion that [Jones] would want or need to post anything anonymously to a small group after having appeared on national TV news shows dozens of times and in every major media outlet nationally and in Florida," it adds. The complaint also cited recent media reports that revealed the username and password for the DOH's private messaging system that Jones is accused of illegally accessing was posted in publicly available documents on the DOH website. "There is no possibility that access could be unauthorized when the DOH website, in seven places, describes how anyone can access the site with no indication that access is restricted in any way," the complaint says. "It is not even theoretically possible that whoever sent the message committed a crime, so there is no possibility that a legitimate search warrant could issue to find out whether [Jones] sent the message." Rather, the search warrant was because the FDLE was "seeking to ingratiate itself to DeSantis" and "sought to silence [Jones'] online speech by confiscating her computer and to discover her confidential sources and other information by seizing her cell phone," the complaint argues. "That was the motive for obtaining the search warrant, not the ridiculous notion that FDLE believed [Jones] sent the message at issue and that it would have been illegal so to do." DeSantis defended the agency in the aftermath of the raid, telling reporters: "They've been smeared as the gestapo for doing their jobs. They did a search warrant. Why did they do a search warrant on the house? Because her IP address was linked to the felony. What were they supposed to do? Just ignore it?"
"DeSantis for the win" - he now has a documentary coming out about him New documentary ‘Killing a State’ looks at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ COVID-19 response “I never wanted to do a documentary,” Malott said. “But someone had to do it.” https://www.cltampa.com/arts-entert...-at-florida-gov-ron-desantis-covid19-response Filmmaker Michael Malott is working on a new documentary about the impact of COVID-19 on Florida residents and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ response to the pandemic. “We needed someone to have the ability to lead the state and protect the citizens and that didn't happen,” Malott said in a phone call to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “I felt that needed to be documented.” The documentary is a product of Malott’s film company Bad Clown Films. He said his true passion lies in making low-budget horror films and he never planned to make a documentary. When he came up with the idea for this upcoming film, “Killing a State,” he had hoped someone else would run with it. When they didn’t, he knew it was up to him to tell the story. “I never wanted to do a documentary,” Malott said. “But someone had to do it.” While the topic of the documentary isn’t fictional, it certainly is frightening. “My horror films have a killer and two or three victims,” he said. “But right now we've got over a million victims of COVID-19 and that is scary.” The documentary is nearing the post-production stage, but it has been hard to find a stopping point as the news keeps progressing, he said. Malott expects to wrap up the documentary once most of the state has been vaccinated, and is aiming for an April release. He plans to release the documentary for free online via a variety of streaming services.
looks like someone's fighting the fascistic state, shame the settlement will come from Florida's tax payers' pockets. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/us/rebekah-jones-florida-lawsuit-invs/index.html Fired Florida Covid data scientist's lawsuit calls search of her home 'retaliation' (CNN)The former Florida data analyst who has accused state officials of covering up the extent of the pandemic has filed a lawsuit alleging that police obtained a "sham" search warrant aimed at retaliating against her for being a whistleblower. Rebekah Jones alleges that Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) officials violated her First Amendment rights, deprived her of due process and unlawfully seized her computers, cell phone and storage media during a search of her house on December 7, according to the suit filed Sunday.