Opinion | Covid Vindication for Ron DeSantis

“Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Knowledge,” NPR reported. After the Florida Division of Regulation Enforcement executed a search warrant of her residence, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “despatched the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup” the South Florida Solar Sentinel editorialized.

However in line with the Governor’s workplace, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral selections to change the Division’s COVID-19 dashboard with out enter or approval from the epidemiological staff or her supervisors.”

Police stated they searched her residence due to an information breach traced to her residence IP handle. She was charged with a felony for accessing and downloading confidential well being division information, together with private info of workers. She has pleaded not responsible.

Now the Florida Division of Well being Workplace of Inspector Common has exonerated Mr. DeSantis. The IG interviewed greater than a dozen individuals who labored with state Covid information, together with Ms. Jones’s supervisors. None corroborated her claims.

Some stated she had advised 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 information to take action. Ms. Jones, a geographer by coaching who beforehand labored on hurricane monitoring programs, merely assisted with the Covid information’s on-line dashboard.

“If the complainant or different DOH employees have been to have falsified COVID-19 information on the dashboard, the dashboard would then not have matched the information within the corresponding remaining day by day report,” the IG defined, including that “such a discrepancy” would absolutely have been detected by Bureau of Epidemiology employees, researchers or the media. The IG discovered no fact to any of Ms. Jones’s accusations.

One purpose so many Individuals don’t belief the media is as a result of they’ve discovered that partisan narratives drive an excessive amount of reporting. We want they have been improper.