Rebekah Jones

Rebekah Jones (born 1989) is an American geographer, data scientist, and activist. She has been referred to as a whistleblower, but this was widely disputed by critics due to her claims against state health officials being unfounded or conspiracy theorys. She managed the team that created the Florida Department of Health's COVID-19 dashboard using ArcGIS software. She was fired from her position in May 2020, which she said was due to her refusal to misrepresent COVID-19 data. In May 2021, she was granted whistleblower protections while the state investigated her allegations.

Rebekah Jones
Born1989 (age 33–34)[1]
Windber, Pennsylvania[2]
EducationSyracuse University (BS)
Louisiana State University (MS)
Florida State University
Scientific career
FieldsGeography, data science
InstitutionsLouisiana State University
Florida State University
Websitegeojones.org

In May 2022, Florida's Office of Inspector General exonerated the state health officials, finding her claims against the DOH to be unsubstantiated or unfounded. After her complaints were dismissed, Jones published a forgery of the notice she received from the Florida Commission on Human Relations, which she claimed validated her whistleblower claims. In December 2022, she signed a deferred prosecution agreement admitting guilt to unauthorized use of the state's emergency alert system on November 10, 2020, which resulted in her home being raided by police in December 2020.

In the 2022 U.S. House of Representatives elections in Florida, Jones was the Democratic Party nominee against Matt Gaetz for Florida's 1st congressional district;[3] she was defeated on November 8, 2022.[4]

Early life and education

Jones was born in Windber, Pennsylvania to "blue collar" parents.[2] At age 9, her family moved to Wiggins, Mississippi, where she spent most of her childhood. She says she grew up poor, often housing and food insecure.[5][6][7][8] Jones graduated from Stone High School in 2007.[9] Jones has said she missed months of high school when she says the school was destroyed[lower-alpha 1] during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.[14][15] She says her experiences in Katrina made her interested in natural disasters.[6] She says in her junior year she was removed from class for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and led other students to do the same after learning from civil liberties groups she was acting within her rights.[16]

Jones graduated cum laude from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University with dual degrees in geography and journalism in 2012.[17]

In 2014, she received a master's degree in geography and a minor in mass communication from Louisiana State University,[18] where she won an award the same year from the Association of American Geographers.[19] In 2015, her research titled Quantifying Extreme Weather Event Impacts on the Northern Gulf Coast Using Landsat Imagery was published in the Journal of Coastal Research.[20]

Jones was a graduate student in the Department of Geography at Florida State University from 2016 through 2018[21] where she worked on a doctoral dissertation titled Using Native American Sitescapes to Extend the North American Paleotempestological Record Through Coupled Remote Sensing and Climatological Analysis.[22][23][21]

Florida Department of Health

In September 2018, she became a geographic information system (GIS) analyst at Florida Department of Health (DOH) in Tallahassee and worked on the agency's emergency response team during Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Dorian. Jones performed analysis and modeling of mapping and surveillance data to provide information to the public and state officials used to coordinate disaster response, like the organization of patient movement to open beds between interstate hospitals.[24][25][26][27] In November 2019, she was appointed to a manager role within GIS handling analysis and tracking of environmental health data and health services.[28][24][27] She managed the team of data scientists and public health officers that used Esri's ArcGIS[29] software to create the widely praised Florida Department of Health's COVID-19 dashboard.[30][31][32][33]

Removal from the COVID-19 dashboard team

Jones managed the dashboard for two months.[34][35] On May 4, 2020, a Miami Herald reporter made an inquiry to DOH about evidence they said could indicate an earlier community spread from the published data, which was handled by Jones's team.[36][37] The Tampa Bay Times and The Palm Beach Post reported the data field was removed the same day, but returned on May 5.[38] Shamarial Roberson, Deputy Secretary of Health, said the field was unimportant and indicated when a patient believed their symptoms began.[39] A spokesperson for the Department of Health responded that the dates Jones referred to corresponded to dates when individuals may have come into contact with the virus, rather than dates when they tested positive.[40] Carina Blackmore, the director for the division, instructed Jones to disable exporting data files to ensure the data matched what was in their PDF counterpart. Jones was adamant that broad access to complete raw data was crucial for the academic community.[41] When instructed by her superiors to restrict access to any of the data, she objected, claiming it was unethical.[42] In emails she said, "This is the wrong call," and "I'm not pulling our primary resource for coronavirus data because he (Pritchard)[lower-alpha 2] wants to stick it to journalists."[45][46] Blackmore said the temporary removal was due to concerns about privacy and potential misunderstanding and misuse of the field.[47] The following day, Jones was removed from the COVID-19 dashboard team. She threatened to quit and went on leave.[48][49]

Firing from the Florida Department of Health

On May 15, 2020, Jones sent an email to a public listserv suggesting her removal was punishment for a commitment to accessibility and transparency and should cast doubt on the data's integrity.[50][51][52] On May 18, Jones was fired for insubordination, after refusing an offer to resign.[53][54] The Associated Press reported that state records detailed repeated warnings by her supervisor not to publicly discuss her work without permission, including releasing unauthorized charts.[55] The spokesperson for Florida governor Ron DeSantis said Jones was dismissed for making unilateral decisions about the dashboard without consulting others on the team.[56] Her superiors testified that they were unaware that she had made raw data available for export that did not match.[57][58] Jones disputes the state's claims and alleges that she was fired because she refused to manipulate data to indicate reopening readiness in rural counties to align with DeSantis's reopening plan.[59][60]

Jones's allegations amounted to disagreements about methodology by which the state evaluated readiness to reopen. She opposed the way the state computed test positivity rates which had been previously announced on April 24 and believes that positive results for antibody testing[lower-alpha 3] should be included in cumulative case totals, which outside epidemiologists don't recommend as they can skew results.[62][63][64][61] She also opposed a state policy on reopening of rural counties, which was permitted under federal guidelines to make low-population areas more resilient to small, containable spikes in cases.[65][66] In emails obtained by Miami Herald, Carina Blackmore assembled a small team including Jones to "to develop new data for a reopening plan" at the end of April 2020. When the criteria supplied by the White House showed that highly populated counties were ready to open, but not rural counties, Blackmore suggested lower populations might be held to a different standard to account for natural social distancing.[67] Jones alleged that the deputy health secretary, Shamarial Roberson, then ordered Jones to manually change the data to support reopening.[68][69] The subsequent May 4 reopening resulted in a surge in cases,[70][71][72][73] but DeSantis used an external task force, not the DOH, to make recommendations on reopening. DeSantis said, "It's not up to the health department to say a 'yes' or a 'no'."[74][75] Jones alleged that the state ordered her to delete positive test results and deaths, and alleged the state was hiding such data to make the pandemic seem less deadly, which was referred to as a conspiracy theory.[76][77][78][79] Discrepancies in death counts from Jones's understanding of the data came from nonresident deaths, which were forwarded to the deceased's home.[80][81] DeSantis was criticized for reopening against the advice of epidemiologists.[82] Florida reversed and slowed reopening the following month.[83]

Jones filed a formal complaint in July 2020 for wrongful termination and misconduct of DOH officials.[84] She was granted formal whistleblower protections by the Florida Office of Inspector General in May 2021 while investigation into her claims was ongoing.[85] In May 2022, the Florida Office of Inspector General reported that her claims were unsubstantiated and lacked sufficient evidence, and exonerated officials she accused of wrongdoing.[86] Marc Caputo of NBC News wrote that "the independent report paints a portrait of an employee who did not understand public health policy or the significance of epidemiological data, did not have high-level access to crucial information and leveled claims that made professional health officials 'skeptical.'"[87] On October 26, 2022, Jones posted an altered image of a letter from the Florida Commission on Human Relations on her Instagram account, which she claimed proved that her whistleblower claims were validated. The caption read "Someone let Marc Caputo know he's a lying sack of s--t." The differences included adding a claim that she had "demonstrated a) violation of law 'which create and presents a substantial and specific danger to the public's health, safety, or welfare;' or b) actual or suspected 'gross mismanagement' as defined by the Act, …" and references to specific rules related to firing state employees. There were also inconsistencies in the text's formatting and style.[88] She subsequently deleted the post, but maintains that the version Marc Caputo received from FCHR was the forgery.[89][90] The Pensacola News Journal verified the digital copy they received was not modified after the day it was created and mailed to Jones.[91]

Jones also alleged that the governor's office was micromanaging the health department, misleading the public about the state's vaccination data, and criticized DeSantis for pushing to reopen too early. These claims and criticisms were substantiated by journalists, but were not a part of the official reports Jones filed.[92][93]

Police search warrant and deferred prosecution agreement

On December 7, 2020, at 8:30 a.m., state police executed a search warrant upon Jones' home,[94] where they confiscated electronic devices including her personal phone and laptop computer. She posted video of the encounter taken from a home security camera on Twitter.[95] Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a statement later that day that the warrant was issued because Jones was suspected of hacking into a Florida Department of Health computer system and sending an unauthorized message to members of the State Emergency Response Team on November 10, 2020.[96] The alleged statement urged recipients to "speak up before another 17,000 people are dead".[97] In a press interview later that morning, Jones denied sending the unauthorized message. She stated that because the authorities seized only her personal electronic devices and not other electronics in her house that could have been used to send the unauthorized message, she does not think she was the target of the investigation at all, but rather that her phone was seized so authorities could identify the Florida Department of Health workers with whom she had been communicating, including her confidential sources.[98]

On January 16, 2021, an arrest warrant was issued for Jones by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement claiming she illegally breached state systems and downloaded the confidential contact information for nearly 20,000 people and sent a message to state employees telling them to "speak out." Jones stated she was not allowed to speak to the media about the charges because it could "result in the police 'stacking' additional charges".[99][100] Jones turned herself in on January 18 to the police, after which she tested positive for COVID.[101] After numerous case management hearings, a trial date was set for Jones's felony charge, scheduled for January 23, 2023.[102] On December 8, 2022, she entered into a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid trial, where among other requirements, she would have to admit guilt, pay a $20,000 fine to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, do community service, and see a mental health professional monthly.[103][104]

U.S. civil liberties watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation warned about the over-reliance of IP addresses and called for the need to reform overbroad computer crime laws.[105] Ars Technica and Forbes reported that the affidavit stated that the emergency alert system at the time the unauthorized message was sent used a single username and password, searchable by Google, calling into question if the act could be considered a "hack".[106][107]

Dropped lawsuit

Jones filed a lawsuit on December 20, 2020,[108] against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Commissioner Rick Swearingen[109] alleging that the police obtained a "sham" search warrant whose true purpose was to retaliate against her. Her suit claimed that one of the FDLE agents grabbed her "without consent, authorization, or legitimate basis" while searching her home.[110] She also alleged that the FDLE violated her First Amendment free speech rights, and had performed an unlawful search and seizure when they confiscated computers and her personal cell phone.[108] Attorneys for Jones sought damages and a jury trial, stating in the 19-page lawsuit, which was filed in Leon County court, that "They entered her home with guns drawn, terrorizing her family."[109] On February 6, 2021, court records show Jones dropped the lawsuit against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, although the disposition of her seized property remains unresolved.[111] Bodycam footage was later released by FDLE, though this footage did not show the officers entering the house, as seen in the footage from Jones's home security cameras.[112][113]

Subsequent activities

After her firing, Jones launched an independent COVID-19 data dashboard for the state of Florida,[114] which gained her a national award by Forbes.[115] A Florida spokesperson criticized Jones's COVID-19 dashboard for including antibody tests, for counting virus tests with antibody tests, and for counting non-resident deaths.[116] The non-profit FinMango partnered with Jones for a national project.[117]

In June 2021, she was suspended from Twitter for violations of the Twitter rules on spam and platform manipulation.[118][119] Governor DeSantis's office welcomed the suspension, with a spokesperson calling it "long overdue" and accusing Jones of spreading "defamatory conspiracy theories".[120][121]

On December 8, 2022, it was announced that Jones would be hosting a new podcast, "Miss Informational" on Big Mouth Media, a new venture by former congressional candidate Dr. Cindy Banyai.[122]

2022 Congressional candidacy

In May 2021, Jones announced that she would not run for congress, either in Maryland where she was living at the time, or in Florida, stating that she did not feel safe running in Florida, and that she was not well-enough prepared to run in Maryland.[123] A day after her suspension from Twitter in June, she announced her intention to run against incumbent Matt Gaetz in the 2022 U.S. House elections but subsequently downplayed her announcement in another post, saying that if a Republican or Democratic challenger did not appear, "Well, November 2022 is a long ways away".[124][125] Jones launched her campaign for Florida's first congressional district in July 2021.[126] Although she filed with the FEC as an independent, she later had to change her filing to run as a Democrat due to voting and election law changes enacted before Jones declared her candidacy.[127][128]

On July 15, 2022, a lawsuit was filed against Jones by her primary campaign opponent, Margaret "Peggy" Schiller and a Northwest Florida resident, asserting that Jones violated a state law that requires someone to be a member of a political party for a full year ahead of qualifying if they are running for that party's nomination. The suit sought an injunction to remove Jones from the primary ballot.[129][130] She was removed from the ballot on August 5 after a judge ruled she failed to meet political party registration requirements.[131][132] On August 12, Jones was granted a motion to stay with regards to her appeal of the ruling, allowing her to continue her campaign.[132] On August 22, 2022, the 1st District Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling, letting Jones stay on the ballot as a valid candidate.[133] On August 23, 2022, she won the Democratic primary election, and ran against Gaetz in the November general election,[134] which she lost on November 8, 2022.[4]

Jones has had prior criminal charges. At the time the search warrant was executed, Jones was facing an active misdemeanor charge on allegations of cyberstalking a former student of hers who was a romantic partner and publishing sexual details about their relationship online. She was fired from her Florida State University teaching position for threatening to give a failing grade to her romantic partner's roommate.[135] She faced prior charges including felony robbery, trespass, and contempt of court stemming from an alleged violation of a domestic violence restraining order related to the same ex-boyfriend, but those charges were dropped. In 2017, she had been arrested and charged with criminal mischief in the vandalism of his car, but the charges were dropped.[135][136][137][114]

Jones faced criminal charges in Louisiana in 2016 where she was arrested and charged by the LSU Police Department with one count each of battery on a police officer and remaining after forbidden and two counts of resisting arrest after refusing to vacate a Louisiana State University office upon being dismissed from her staff position.[138][139]

Honors

In 2020, Jones was recognized by Fortune magazine's 40 Under 40 in Healthcare for founding Florida COVID Action.[140] She was named Forbes's 2020 Technology Person of the Year for creating alternative Florida COVID-19 tracking dashboards.[115]

See also

Notes
  1. Katrina made landfall as a category 3 tropical storm near Triumph, Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Storm surge affected Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi, 40 miles south of Wiggins.[10] Stone High School served as the location of the American Red Cross relief headquarters for the area and a standby shelter.[11][12][13]
  2. Scott Pritchard is the former Interim Director of Infectious Disease Prevention and Investigations Section in the Bureau of Epidemiology's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection at the Department of Health. He left the DOH, and subsequently the state of Florida, after Governor Ron DeSantis announced his school reopening plan.[43][44]
  3. Antibody tests check for past infections while diagnostic tests check for current infections.[61]

References
  1. Fedor, Lauren (December 11, 2020). "Rebekah Jones: a data scientist takes on the Florida governor". Financial Times. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Born in 1989, Ms Jones spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where major storms, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, piqued her interest in natural disasters.
  2. "Rebekah Jones". Ballotpedia. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Rebekah Jones was born in Windber, Pennsylvania.
  3. Nerozzi, Timothy H J. "Florida's Rebekah Jones, who launched unsubstantiated COVID data allegations, allowed back on House ballot". Fox. Archived from the original on August 24, 2022. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
  4. Davis, Kai (November 8, 2022). "Rep. Gaetz defeats Democrat Rebekah Jones for Florida District 1 Congressional seat". WEAR. Archived from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
  5. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 31, 2023. But she'd never been afraid to stand up to authority. She grew up poor, intermittently food and housing insecure, the daughter of a scrappy mother whom she watched face injustice after injustice.
  6. Fedor, Lauren (December 11, 2020). "Rebekah Jones: a data scientist takes on the Florida governor". Financial Times. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Born in 1989, Jones spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where major storms, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, piqued her interest in natural disasters.
  7. Turner, Jane (February 1, 2021). "Rebekah Jones: Woman of Steel and COVID Whistleblower". Whistleblower Network News. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Both mother and father worked at blue-collar jobs, and Jones remembers a childhood that was "food and housing insecure and I hurt from hunger." Jones knew from an early age she "never fit in, I stood out." When Jones was nine years old, the family moved to rural South Mississippi.
  8. Loomar, Ava (May 13, 2021). "Rebekah Jones And The Consequences Of Whistleblowing". WUFT News. Retrieved January 31, 2023. In an essay Jones once submitted in court testimony, she described going to bed with a gurgling belly. Relatives sometimes took in the family when their rent money grew thin. When 9-year-old Jones arrived in Wiggins, fewer than 4,000 people lived there; a quarter, under the poverty line.
  9. "Stone High Grad Seeks Fla. Congressional Seat, Could Stand Trial in January 23'". Stone County Enterprise. September 18, 2022. Retrieved January 31, 2023. A 2007 Stone High School graduate turned whistleblower and data scientist seeks Florida's 1st Congressional District this November.
  10. "Hurricane Katrina Timeline". www.thepeoplehistory.com. Retrieved January 31, 2023. August 29th, 2005 Katrina Makes Landfall As Category 3 Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina Makes Landfall as Category 3 status at 6:10 AM local time near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana with sustained windspeeds of 140 MPH Storm Surge in Area Affected up to 22 foot New Orleans Storm Surge in Area Affected up to 30 foot Biloxi-Gulfport Mississippi
  11. Nieves, Evelyn (September 14, 2005). "The Region Starts to Stagger Back". Washington Post. Once the local television station announced that hurricane money was finally coming to Stone County, word spread fast. People began showing up in front of Stone High School just after 10 p.m. Monday. By 8 the next morning, when the Red Cross opened for business, the line was 4 1/2 blocks long.
  12. "Sept. 6, 2005: More Katrina damage, recovery | Gallery". Hattiesburg American. September 6, 2005. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles leave Stone County High School Tuesday going into rural areas for hot meal distribution.
  13. "The Disaster Center's Tropical Storm - Hurricane Katrina Page". The Disaster Center. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Standby Stone County High School 400 East Border Wiggins MS
  14. Cox, Jay (March 31, 2020). "Alumna Tracks the COVID-19 Outbreak". Archived from the original on May 19, 2020. Retrieved January 31, 2023. She was also out of school for months after her high school was destroyed.
  15. Loomar, Ava (May 13, 2021). "Rebekah Jones And The Consequences Of Whistleblowing". WUFT News. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Jones held onto that, even as Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf coast, flooding her home and destroying her high school. She couldn't attend classes for months and her family had trouble getting federal assistance.
  16. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 31, 2023. By junior year, she was thrown out of class for declining to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance (the "implied deference to God" made her uncomfortable). She called Mississippi civil liberties experts, who agreed she was within her rights, and ended up converting other students to her cause.
  17. Cox, Jay (March 31, 2020). "Alumna Tracks the COVID-19 Outbreak". Syracuse.edu. Syracuse University. Archived from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  18. Turner, Jane (February 1, 2021). "Rebekah Jones: Woman of Steel and COVID Whistleblower". Whistleblower Network News. Archived from the original on May 18, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  19. "2014 Specialty Group Awards | AAG". www.aag.org. Archived from the original on May 14, 2021. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  20. Jones, Rebekah (July 9, 2014). "Quantifying Extreme Weather Event Impacts on the Northern Gulf Coast Using Landsat Imagery". Journal of Coastal Research. 31 (5): 1229–1240. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-14-00065.1. ISSN 0749-0208. S2CID 128642612. Archived from the original on January 12, 2023. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  21. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi; Waymer, Jim (May 21, 2020). "Accusations fly around dismissed Health Department official, but questions about COVID-19 data persist". Florida Today. Archived from the original on January 6, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  22. Geraghty, Este; Lanclos, Ryan (April 20, 2020). "COVID-19: Dedicated Scientist in Florida Made Quick Moves to Map the Disease". Esri Blog. Environmental Systems Research Institute. Archived from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  23. Jones, Rebekah D. "Rebekah Jones Academic Record". Academia.edu. Archived from the original on June 20, 2020. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  24. Taylor, Langston (May 19, 2020). "Florida Health Department manager told to delete coronavirus data is ousted". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved January 14, 2023. She worked for emergency response teams after hurricanes Michael and Dorian before becoming GIS manager in November 2019.
  25. Cox, Jay (March 31, 2020). "Alumna Tracks the COVID-19 Outbreak". Syracuse.edu. Syracuse University. Archived from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2020. When Jones joined the Florida Department of Health in September 2018 as a GIS analyst, Hurricane Michael stormed through the South several days later and she was activated as a member of the state's emergency response team. A year later, she also worked with the team when Hurricane Dorian materialized and tracked along the Atlantic coast. In natural disasters, her mapping and surveillance work provides crucial information, informing the public and allowing state officials to consider where to send resources or concentrate their efforts and to keep lines of communication open with other government officials, she says.
  26. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 14, 2023. Before the pandemic, she'd worked on coordinating hurricane response after Hurricanes Michael and Dorian, helping organize hospital patients' movements around the country to open beds.
  27. Geraghty, Este; Lanclos, Ryan (April 20, 2020). "COVID-19: Dedicated Scientist in Florida Made Quick Moves to Map the Disease". Esri. Retrieved January 14, 2023. Now, she manages data and surveillance and performs analysis, modeling, and mapping for the Florida Department of Health. ... Jones is usually working on other types of GIS maps and analysis—tracking environmental factors such as radon and water quality and making sure health services reach women, infants, children, and the elderly.
  28. Cox, Jay (March 31, 2020). "Alumna Tracks the COVID-19 Outbreak". Syracuse.edu. Syracuse University. Archived from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2020. Jones was appointed GIS manager in November 2019 and normally focuses her efforts on tracking environmental health—radon levels, well water surveillance, water quality assurance and testing, for instance—and other issues such as WIC-related data, homelessness and elderly affairs.
  29. Geraghty, Este; Lanclos, Ryan (April 20, 2020). "COVID-19: Dedicated Scientist in Florida Made Quick Moves to Map the Disease". Esri. Retrieved January 14, 2023. We have a similar battle rhythm now as during a hurricane activation; however, the meetings and the discussion topics have changed to focus directly on this public health emergency," said Jason Ray, GIS administrator and acting chief information officer at the Florida Division of Emergency Management. "We are utilizing our WebEOC instance for local resource requests and mission management, as we typically do during a hurricane response, while pushing data to ArcGIS Online to create dashboards that provide situation awareness to state and county emergency response teams.
  30. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi. "Coronavirus: As Florida re-opens, COVID-19 data chief gets sidelined and researchers cry foul". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Florida's COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility...The site was created by a team of Florida Department of Health data scientists and public health officers headed by Rebekah Jones.
  31. Fedor, Lauren (December 11, 2020). "Rebekah Jones: a data scientist takes on the Florida governor". Financial Times. Retrieved January 14, 2023. In March, she spearheaded the department's coronavirus dashboard, a platform that was widely praised as an accessible but comprehensive tool for tracking the spread of the virus. Within six weeks, Ms Jones says, more than 100m people had viewed the page.
  32. Pierce, Charles P. (May 19, 2020). "Ron DeSantis's Devotion to Trump Makes Brian Kemp Look Like Adam Schiff". Esquire. Retrieved January 14, 2023. Florida had a dashboard for information about the pandemic that was widely praised for its clarity and accessibility.
  33. Allen, Greg (May 19, 2020). "Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State's Coronavirus Data". npr. The scientist who created a widely praised dashboard monitoring Florida's COVID-19 cases says she has been dismissed for refusing to manipulate that data. Rebekah Jones worked in Florida's Department of Health.
  34. Persaud, Chris. "Ousted Florida scientist Rebekah Jones' whistleblower complaint takes aim at DeSantis". The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Florida's dashboard, made and maintained by Jones after the pandemic broke out in March, earned praise nationwide, including from Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. Jones said she worked 12-hour days for nearly two months, maintaining the dashboard and the complex data powering it.
  35. Mazzei, Patricia (December 11, 2020). "A State Scientist Questioned Florida's Virus Data. Now Her Home's Been Raided". The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Ms. Jones had helped build the statistics dashboard showing how the virus was rapidly spreading in a state that had been hesitant to mandate broad restrictions. Two months in, Ms. Jones was sidelined and then fired for insubordination, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns.
  36. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. The official reason for Jones' dismissal began with an email from a Herald reporter on May 4, 2020. Reporters were inquiring about something they'd seen in DOH's published data: a variable that showed illnesses dating back into late December 2019 and evidence of community spread potentially months earlier than previously reported...The Herald's question was referred from the communications director to Blackmore, the director of disease control, who emailed that it should be answered by someone "high level." It then bounced around the Epi team and when no one wanted to answer, landed directly in Jones' lap.
  37. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi (May 23, 2020). "Fired scientist defends her COVID-19 data role, portrays Florida Dept. of Health as corrupt". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Jones revealed a chain of instructions that began on May 4, clearly instructing her to not just revoke access to certain data, as previously reported, but to take down the whole site because it provided access to the data...Jones said part of the motivation to take certain data down was because Deputy Secretary Roberson "did not want the public to see non-resident data nor the event date data, which the Miami Herald had confronted her and Scott Pritchard about earlier that day," Jones wrote.
  38. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Sometime that day, the column vanished from the "Person Cases" data, which lists anonymized records for every confirmed case in Florida. The Palm Beach Post reported the disappearance the next day, May 5...The Tampa Bay Times automatically checks for changes in the data and archives new updates. Shortly before 10:12 a.m on May 4., data still included the EventDate field, showing records with listed dates that people reported symptoms as early as January 1. By 3:02 p.m., the column was gone...For much of the next day, May 5, the column was either missing or empty, with every row listing "None." Finally, it returned shortly before 8:02 p.m.
  39. Farrington, Brendan; Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 23, 2020). "Public remarks prompted Florida virus data curator's firing". Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Deputy Secretary for Health Dr. Shamarial Roberson said that Jones's pushback was over the "EventDate" category, which is when a patient reports first remembering having possible symptoms and is separate from when the illness is confirmed. "Event date is not the important field," Roberson said. "A case is deemed when you have that laboratory result as positive."
  40. Iati, Marisa (June 16, 2020). "Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Jones is publishing the statistics on her own". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved December 8, 2020. A department spokesman said the January dates that Jones referenced are not necessarily when a person tested positive for the virus. Those dates could also represent the first day someone came into contact with an infected person or went to a place where he or she may have contracted the virus, the statement said.
  41. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi (May 18, 2020). "Coronavirus: As Florida re-opens, COVID-19 data chief gets sidelined and researchers cry foul". Florida Today. Retrieved January 31, 2023. If you look at our data services, there's a lot of publicly available data, because it's critical information," Jones said at the time. "The efforts in the academic community to do serious data modeling are crucial right now.
  42. Armus, Teo (January 19, 2021). "Florida police were after a covid-19 data scientist. She turned herself in — and tested positive". Washington Post. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Jones, who had worked as a geographic information systems manager, said she objected to what she considered unethical requests from her supervisors to change the state's coronavirus data dashboard.
  43. "Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Scott Pritchard, who headed the department's investigations unit, left last month. He informed his team he was leaving on the day DeSantis announced plans to reopen schools at "full capacity," according to people familiar with the matter. Pritchard, who did not respond to a request for comment, then left the state altogether.
  44. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi (May 23, 2020). "Fired scientist defends her COVID-19 data role, portrays Florida Dept. of Health as corrupt". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Pritchard is the Interim Director of Infectious Disease Prevention and Investigations Section in the Bureau of Epidemiology's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection at the Department of Health.
  45. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. "Per Dr. Blackmore, disable the ability to export the data to files from the dashboard immediately. We need to ensure that dates (date fields) in all objects match their counterpart on the PDF line list published," Curry wrote. The tables in the PDF documents did not include the column of data showing when symptoms were first reported, only the "Case Date" — the date the state recorded and confirmed the case. "This is the wrong call," Jones replied minutes later.
  46. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi (May 23, 2020). "Fired scientist defends her COVID-19 data role, portrays Florida Dept. of Health as corrupt". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Registering her disapproval in an email to IT Director Craig Curry she wrote "I'm not pulling our primary resource for coronavirus data because he (Pritchard) wants to stick it to journalists."
  47. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. "I had great concerns these could be used to violate patients' privacy," Blackmore said in her statement in the whistleblower case. "I also had great concerns about external users manipulating Florida data without guidance on the strengths and limitations of these data." The data was restored May 5, but without the variable that the Herald had asked about. Eventually that was fully restored May 6, and remains available through the DOH dashboard.
  48. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. The day after requiring Jones to take down data, "management" made the decision to remove the dashboard from Jones' stewardship...Jones said she threatened to quit her role as GIS manager outright after being removed from the dashboard, but Curry talked her out of it.
  49. Persaud, Chris. "Ousted Florida scientist Rebekah Jones' whistleblower complaint takes aim at DeSantis". The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved January 16, 2023. After nearly two weeks on leave, Jones contacted a supervisor for advice on filing a whistleblower complaint. Shortly afterward, on May 18, the state fired her. That's the same day DeSantis allowed all Florida's counties to enter Phase 1 of reopening, a process that began May 4.
  50. Arnold, Amanda (December 8, 2020). "Florida Continues to Target a Top COVID-19 Data Scientist". The Cut. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Then, on May 5, Jones wrote an email to researchers and members of the public, informing them that she and her team had been blocked from managing the dashboard for "reasons beyond my division's control." She continued: "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. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it."
  51. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi. "Coronavirus: As Florida re-opens, COVID-19 data chief gets sidelined and researchers cry foul". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Citing "reasons beyond my division's control," Jones said her office is no longer managing the dashboard, is no longer involved in publication, fixing errors or answering questions "in any shape or form." She warned that she does not know what the new team's intentions are for data access, including "what data they are now restricting." "I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come," she wrote.
  52. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. By the next morning, control over the data was given to other employees, according to an email Jones posted Friday on a public listserv. Jones, the department's geographic information systems manager, wrote that she was no longer handling questions about the department's "Florida's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard." She implied her removal was an act of retribution.
  53. Farrington, Brendan; Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 23, 2020). "Public remarks prompted Florida virus data curator's firing". Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2020. The Republican governor lashed out at a news conference earlier this week saying Jones had a pattern of "insubordination" and should have been fired months ago. Jones was told to resign or be fired last Monday and her last work day was Thursday, after a pattern of overstepping her duties as data manager.
  54. Mansoor, Sanya (June 15, 2020). "Fired Florida Data Scientist Creates Competing COVID-19 Tracking Site and Suggests State Is Hiding Important Information". Time. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Gov. Ron De Santis said last month that Jones was "dismissed" because "she didn't listen to the people who were her superiors." "What she was doing was she was putting data on the portal which the scientists didn't believe was valid data," he said about Jones.
  55. Farrington, Brendan; Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 23, 2020). "Public remarks prompted Florida virus data curator's firing". Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show a supervisor warned Jones on April 9 after she posted a message on a newspaper Facebook page about the dashboard. She was told she needs approval before publicly discussing the work. Less than two weeks later, she was warned again when a mapping company's online magazine published an extensive interview with Jones. Her supervisor later found a public blog in which Jones discussed the dashboard, released unauthorized charts and added "political commentary" in posts that appear to have been taken down.
  56. Mansoor, Sanya (June 15, 2020). "Fired Florida Data Scientist Creates Competing COVID-19 Tracking Site and Suggests State Is Hiding Important Information". Time. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2020. The governor's spokesperson Helen Aguirre Ferré also reportedly said in a statement last month that Jones "exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the department's COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors."
  57. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi (May 23, 2020). "Fired scientist defends her COVID-19 data role, portrays Florida Dept. of Health as corrupt". Florida Today. Retrieved January 16, 2023. This whole site needs to come down," Scott Pritchard wrote in one of the email Jones provided. "It literally has all the data files.
  58. Klas, Mary Ellen (May 28, 2022). "Report rejects Rebekah Jones' claim that Florida doctored COVID data". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved January 18, 2023. The next day, Jones' managers removed the dashboard from her control and accused her of publishing "unauthorized" data, according to the emails provided to the Herald that were not included in the inspector general's report...Roberson, Blackmore, and Pritchard each testified during their sworn interviews that they "were unaware the dashboard contained an open 'data hub' when the dashboard was first activated," the inspector general's report said.
  59. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi. "Florida scientist was fired for 'refusing to manipulate' COVID-19 data, she said". Florida Today. Archived from the original on November 10, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2020. After FLORIDA TODAY first reported Jones' removal from her position in charge of the Florida COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard she created, she confirmed, as reported by CBS-12 in West Palm Beach that she was fired because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."
  60. Mansoor, Sanya (June 15, 2020). "Fired Florida Data Scientist Creates Competing COVID-19 Tracking Site and Suggests State Is Hiding Important Information". Time. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Previously the geographic information systems manager at Florida's DOH, Jones claims she was fired for refusing to manipulate coronavirus data by manually changing it to justify reopening the state's economy and for speaking out against hiding data from the public...Jones says, "I don't think we were ever going to take a data and science driven approach." She claims "the plan (to re-open) was already made. It was just about molding the data into something that was supporting it."
  61. Waldrop, Theresa; Flores, Rosa; Sutton, Joe (May 20, 2020). "Florida and Georgia facing scrutiny for their Covid-19 data reporting". CNN. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Questions around data are not limited to these two states. Virginia, Vermont and Texas, for example, are among a few states that had combined diagnostic tests and antibody tests into one total. But the tests measure different things – diagnostic tests check for current infection, and antibody tests check for past infection – so combining them could skew results and mislead policy-makers and the public.
  62. Farrington, Brendan; Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 23, 2020). "Public remarks prompted Florida virus data curator's firing". Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2020. She said the state made changes in April to support its initial reopening May 4, for example by altering the way it reports the positivity rate of testing in a way she disagreed with. Instead of showing the rate of all positive tests, it began showing the rate of new positive tests — filtering out people who previously tested positive. This was not a behind-the-scenes change. DeSantis announced it at an April 24 news conference, arguing it was the better figure for assessing trends in testing and control of the outbreak.
  63. Mansoor, Sanya (June 15, 2020). "Fired Florida Data Scientist Creates Competing COVID-19 Tracking Site and Suggests State Is Hiding Important Information". Time. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Moscoso defended the state's decision not to include antibody tests in their cumulative total, noting that they "are not typically used or considered effective for diagnosing cases of COVID-19" and could potentially lead to "double-counting." Moscoso also said that DOH handles deaths of nonresidents by contacting public health authorities from the individual's state or country of residence to ensure that the proper authorities are aware of and tracking the case." Doing so helps ensure deaths are not double-counted across states when analyzing data on a national or international scale, they said.
  64. Mazzei, Patricia (December 11, 2020). "A State Scientist Questioned Florida's Virus Data. Now Her Home's Been Raided". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Her dashboard shows a higher total number of cases than the state's official records because it includes the number of positive antibody tests, something the Department of Health and outside epidemiologists do not recommend. Ms. Jones has reacted defensively to some of their criticism on Twitter.
  65. Farrington, Brendan; Calvan, Bobby Caina (May 23, 2020). "Public remarks prompted Florida virus data curator's firing". Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Jones also said she opposed how health officials decided to exempt rural counties below 75,000 population from more stringent criteria for reopening — such as showing a downward trajectory of new cases or case positivity in the past 14 days. However, federal guidelines allow states to compute criteria at the state level or to tailor a regional approach that takes into account the severity of outbreak in regions. Florida's small rural counties have had fewer cases and deaths — 21 of them have had no deaths. In such counties, a favorable 14-day trend could easily be upended by a small — but containable — spike in cases.
  66. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 14, 2023. But now, a top state official was telling her to change the test positivity rate of certain counties to align with the state's maximum threshold for reopening, according to Jones...Up until that moment, Jones had had plenty of concerns with how Florida was handling the pandemic, but she considered them outside of her purview—matters of policy, not data (for example, the decision to exempt rural counties from more stringent reopening criteria).
  67. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. "[Our] score card basically says open all major population centers and keep rural places closed, which isn't jiving here," Jones emailed Blackmore, director of disease control, and the rest of the team who waited at the DOH offices. Blackmore suggested that maybe rural counties should be held to a different standard because "data don't always give an accurate picture of risk. If people naturally socially distance most of the time the risk is much less." In the email, she asked Jones to think about how to depict that.
  68. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 14, 2023. But now, a top state official was telling her to change the test positivity rate of certain counties to align with the state's maximum threshold for reopening, according to Jones. (Requests for comment from Shamarial Roberson, Florida's deputy secretary for health, went unanswered, but she previously told the Tampa Bay Times, "It is patently false to say that the Department of Health has manipulated any data.") "There were counties that had, like, 18 or 20 percent positivity," Jones recalls. "And she was like, 'Well, just change it to 10.'"
  69. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. "Roberson obviously wanted a way to justify reopening some counties whether the data justified reopening or not," Jones later wrote in her complaint. At one point, Jones claimed Roberson grew frustrated when Jones didn't "change" numbers. She claimed the deputy health secretary then said "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,'" leaving Jones so uncomfortable she messaged her mother and sister that she wanted to quit her job.
  70. Waldrop, Theresa; Flores, Rosa; Sutton, Joe (May 20, 2020). "Florida and Georgia facing scrutiny for their Covid-19 data reporting". CNN. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Florida allowed many businesses to open, with limitations, on May 4. The phase one reopening went into full effect Monday, allowing malls, restaurants, gyms and libraries to open at 50% capacity.
  71. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. The subsequent reopening was followed by a five-fold surge in COVID-19 cases in Florida last July and some of the single-highest daily case totals across the nation.
  72. Paz, Isabella Grullón (June 5, 2021). "Florida will no longer publish daily coronavirus reports". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Ms. Jones's firing became a flash point as Mr. DeSantis, a close ally of then-President Donald J. Trump, touted Florida's early success in battling the virus — a victory lap that turned out to be premature at the time and led to a disastrous summer.
  73. Caputo, Marc (May 26, 2022). "Florida IG report: 'Insufficient evidence' for DeSantis critic's claims of Covid cover-up". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022. After Florida reopened in the summer of 2020, cases and deaths jumped.
  74. Nazaryan, Alexander. "Ron DeSantis sidelined his health department. Florida paid the price". Yahoo! News. Retrieved January 21, 2023. On the federal level, Trump has largely sidelined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would customarily guide the nation's pandemic response. Following the president's lead, DeSantis has done exactly the same with the Florida Department of Health, largely dismissing the agency as a potential ally, deciding instead to go it alone...DeSantis, who has closely echoed Trump's own calls for schools to return to normal, defended the withholding of such exemptions, even for districts that were continuing to see high infection rates. "It's not up to the health department to say a 'yes' or a 'no,'" he said.
  75. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. ...in a DOH position statement filed Aug. 17, stating that while Jones and a team of DOH epidemiologists had been tapped "to develop new data for a reopening plan" employing key metrics from the White House, their findings were never incorporated into the recommendations to DeSantis. Deputy Secretary of Health Shamarial Roberson denied the department made any recommendations on the reopening plan at all. "An external task force was created by the Executive Office of the Governor to make recommendations to the Governor on reopening, as that was not a function of FDOH," wrote Roberson.
  76. Caputo, Marc (May 26, 2022). "Florida IG report: 'Insufficient evidence' for DeSantis critic's claims of Covid cover-up". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022. The report did not examine one of Jones' most explosives claims: that Florida intentionally hid deaths to make the pandemic seem less deadly. That conspiracy theory, which Jones alternately promoted and recanted on Twitter before her account was suspended for violating the platform's terms of service, has persisted on social media for more than a year, despite the lack of evidence
  77. Bustos, Sergio; Kennedy, John. "State investigators dismiss Rebekah Jones's claims of Florida fudging COVID-19 data". Tallahassee Democrat. Archived from the original on May 30, 2022. Retrieved May 29, 2022. At one point, Jones said her office had directed her former coworkers to "change the numbers and begin slowly deleting deaths and cases so it looks like Florida is improving next week."
  78. Bloch, Emily (March 11, 2021). "Rebekah Jones Tried to Protect Florida From COVID-19—and Then Its Governor Came After Her". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved January 14, 2023. "They're not listening to the scientists," Jones told The Guardian in August. "They're just going to let everybody fend for themselves." On Twitter, she also began pointing out issues she saw with Florida's data since she had no longer been managing it, including what she claims were 76 mysteriously deleted deaths in August (one was a 9-year-old boy who died in June 2020).
  79. Fedor, Lauren (December 11, 2020). "Rebekah Jones: a data scientist takes on the Florida governor". Financial Times. Retrieved January 14, 2023. Since Ms Jones claimed in May that some of Florida's top officials were fiddling with Covid-19 data to downplay the extent of the pandemic, she has been a thorn in Mr DeSantis's side. On Friday, Mr DeSantis lashed out at Ms Jones, saying she had "issues" and had alleged a "conspiracy theory at the department of health, which was unfounded".
  80. Mansoor, Sanya (June 15, 2020). "Fired Florida Data Scientist Creates Competing COVID-19 Tracking Site and Suggests State Is Hiding Important Information". Time. Retrieved January 18, 2023. Moscoso also said that DOH handles deaths of nonresidents by contacting public health authorities from the individual's state or country of residence to ensure that the proper authorities are aware of and tracking the case." Doing so helps ensure deaths are not double-counted across states when analyzing data on a national or international scale, they said.
  81. Iati, Marisa (June 16, 2020). "Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Jones is publishing the statistics on her own". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Moscoso said Jones's dashboard "aggregates disparate sets of data without considering many of the important guidelines utilized by epidemiologists." He said that epidemiologists do not recommend combining active virus tests with antibody tests and that by counting nonresidents' deaths, Jones enables each of those fatalities to be tallied in two states.
  82. Caputo, Marc (May 26, 2022). "Florida IG report: 'Insufficient evidence' for DeSantis critic's claims of Covid cover-up". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022. DeSantis was also criticized for reopening the state even as epidemiologists urged a slower approach.
  83. Higgins-Dunn, Noah. "More states reverse or slow reopening plans as coronavirus cases climb". CNBC. Retrieved January 18, 2023. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, also announced Friday on Twitter that the state is ending onsite consumption at bars. Gov. Ron DeSantis allowed bars to reopen with modifications in early June after keeping them closed for two months.
  84. Caputo, Marc (May 26, 2022). "Florida IG report: 'Insufficient evidence' for DeSantis critic's claims of Covid cover-up". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022. The inspector general's report, which interviewed 17 current and former health department officials, was triggered by Jones when she filed her wrongful termination complaint in July 2020 with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and alleged wrongdoing by Department of Health officials.
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  87. Caputo, Marc (May 26, 2022). "Florida IG report: 'Insufficient evidence' for DeSantis critic's claims of Covid cover-up". NBC News. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022.
  88. Little, Jim (October 28, 2022). "After whistleblower complaint was closed, Rebekah Jones' shared altered official letter". Pensacola News Journal. Archived from the original on October 28, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Jones, who was the complainant in the case, shared a version of the letter that says, "Complainant did disclose and demonstrated a) violation of law 'which create and presents a substantial and specific danger to the public's health, safety, or welfare;' or b) actual or suspected 'gross mismanagement' as defined by the Act, …" The state's version of the letter, however, lacks the words "and demonstrated" and instead says "did disclose either a) violation of law …" then goes on to list the same a and b violations. On the second page, Jones' version of the letter lists a specific Florida statute number and administrative code, which appear to be rules related to firing state employees. The state's version does not include those specific references.
  89. Little, Jim (October 28, 2022). "After whistleblower complaint was closed, Rebekah Jones' shared altered official letter". Pensacola News Journal. Archived from the original on October 28, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2023. The News Journal provided Jones with a copy of the state's version, and Jones said in a text message she did not understand why there would be two versions of the letter but speculated the state was responsible for the discrepancies. "It looks like they removed two words, but none of the content/meaning changed," Jones said. "Still says I disclosed a violation of law."
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  91. Little, Jim (October 28, 2022). "After whistleblower complaint was closed, Rebekah Jones' shared altered official letter". Pensacola News Journal. Archived from the original on October 28, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Florida Human Relations Commission spokesperson Frank Penela told the News Journal there was only one version of the letter but he confirmed the letter was sent as a physical copy in the mail to the parties in the case. The digital copy provided to the News Journal by the commission was a PDF file that contained metadata showing the document was created on the same day of the date in the letter, Sept. 12. The metadata shows that the file was created specifically at 10:03 a.m. from an original Microsoft Word file on Sept. 12, and the PDF file was last modified on the same day at 10:31 a.m.
  92. Blaskey, Sarah (June 4, 2020). "What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health". Miami Herald. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Emails and texts reviewed by the Herald show the governor's office worked in coordination with DOH "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 DOH 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...DOH staffers interviewed by the Herald described a "hyper-politicized" communications department that often seemed to be trying to match the narrative coming from Washington. For instance, emails obtained from other sources show the DOH communications department removed pages of information promoting mask wearing from the website. That was on Sept. 24, around the same time the DOH Twitter account stopped posting anything at all about the disease as the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, a staunch DeSantis ally, sought to downplay the pandemic. The Sun Sentinel first reported on the Twitter blackout. There was little patience for dissent, or even mistakes in the department. After complaining about the "state of affairs" one DOH employee texted a friend that a manager had warned "I need to watch myself." Lead DOH spokesman Alberto Moscoso was "pushed out" by the governor's staff because DeSantis aides were unhappy with "some tweets or press releases," according to Moskowitz, who was informed after the Division of Emergency Management communications director was tapped to replace him. (Publicly it was announced as an amicable resignation. Moscoso did not respond to a request for comment.)
  93. Chait, Jonathan (April 1, 2022). "The Last Defense of DeSantis's Anti-Vaccine Campaign Goes Poof". Intelligencer. Retrieved February 10, 2023. Rebekah Jones, for reference, is a former state employee who has alleged that the state is deliberately falsifying its vaccine stats. National Review effectively debunked her allegations — but what she got wrong was her accusation that DeSantis was cooking the books deliberately. The notion that the stats were flawed, due to tourists inflating the count, was always evident. Persaud's reporting finds that the numbers are inflated by more than 600,000. What's more, he finds that other Florida officials — such as the mayor of Miami Beach — alerted DeSantis to the discrepancy, only to receive no response. Why would he act when the inflated numbers were so useful for his supporters in the conservative media to bat away concerns about his courtship of the anti-vaccine movement?
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