Facts don’t matter in modern politics. Trying to reason with the American people is an antiquated political strategy for people who like to feel good about themselves while losing.
There was vitriol because people on this site (and throughout the media) kept bringing her up, and she was obviously publishing nonsense. As a reminder, she created her own site to present the unvarnished truth in COVID cases, and this is the quality of that site:
and then this:
As I said in that thread:
I have no idea how this person has gotten so much credibility in terms of data/analysis, and the linked paper seems obviously preposterous.
Your effort to link criticism of RJ to support of DeSantis is complete nonsense.
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Reflexively defending desantis school policy is still reflexively defending desantis
Actually, school reopenings coupled with appropriate prophylactic measures against COVID, which is the only thing I’ve ever advocated for, are not linked with a statistically identifiable increase in risk, and when very stringent precautions are taken, they actually reduce the COVID risk for household members of school-aged children.
If it validates your feelings, I’m happy to hereby formally acknowledge that unsafe school reopenings contributed to the spread of COVID and caused many deaths.
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Do you have a cite for people reflexively defending DeSantis’s school policy?
What actually happened is that you used studies that were either not applicable to the general population whatsoever or laughably poorly done studies to support opening schools.
Lots of people died because of that school opening decision.
This is not true. I guess you linked the post of mine that you did because you think it supports this point, but it squarely refutes it. The key point about schools has never been the exactly impact of kids-at-school vs kids-in-alternative-arrangements on spread, it’s always been that schools are important and that if we’re going to muddle through the pandemic rather than crushing it, schools should be open and case rates should be tamped down when they get higher than society has decided to accept with other interventions.
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In that post you literally argue that it’s bad to assume that kids spread covid. No one would have argued with you about whether or not schools are important. GMAFB.
As is typical throughout the rebuttal, if you follow the links you’ll discover they don’t actually establish any of what Rebekah is saying in the text. The messages to Craig demonstrate that Rebekah is contemporaneously complaining about the work of coworkers (in fairly unprofessional fashion, btw), but it doesn’t demonstrate that Craig agrees with this. The email from Jessi to Craig is meaningless, I have no clue what the highlighted section is talking about. The only other cite is to Rebekah’s own tweets.
Even if it’s true that Duclos broke the dashboard by doing stupid things, this would not contradict what the NRO piece said about what was going on with regard to employee discipline and so forth. In fact, what the messages between her and Craig seem to demonstrate is that she has been moved off responsibility for the dashboard and these other people are trying to figure out how to update it.
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And if you follow the Desantis and allies bread crumbs?
It’s just not credible that you can determine who is being truthful from the publicly available information from non-partisans.
Bless you and your opinion. It’s the willingness to go all in and die on this hill that’s not understandable as it’s completely impossible to be that certain through all the mud being slung.
But you do you.
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You must be against school re-openings in Florida then.
Richard Corcoran, our caveman state education commissioner (who possesses neither a smidge of medical nor education training whatsoever and got his job solely based on the fact that he’s the term-limited former GOP FL House Speaker) was circulating a memo to county school superintendents a month ago saying that masks should be “optional” because “teh data.”
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I’m certainly against schools being open without mask mandates. From the context of the story you posted, it seems like some FL schools have mandates and some don’t, so I don’t think I really have a view on FL schools in general.
can someone give me the cliffnotes on this
A temporary peace order is only extended if the defendant hasn’t been served yet, or if they ask for an extension to get a lawyer or something. They’re not extended on the merits.
This is the exact kind of thing that makes it so hard to believe anything she says. She takes tiny nuggets of truth and then frames them in completely dishonest ways.
And like… the “she’s been reported to the police…” - Rebekah is the one that reported her! Frivolously, for nothing. She took out a peace order based on Twitter posts ffs.
Person doing Covid dashboard in Florida claims she was asked to lie and was fired for not doing so.
Hit articles come out about her. Mostly from right leaning sources.
Some itt have convicted her. At a minimum she is enjoying the attention. All acknowledge that.
State accuses her of hacking back into the state system. Does pretty fucked up raid to execute search warrant with many large guns pointed in the general direction of her kids.
She claims RWNJ harassment. Including lady referenced above who DeSantis just hired.
Those itt that have convicted basically claim it completely negates anything she says. Especially when about anti-OFS arguments or even if she re-tweets in favor of an anti-OFS argument.
IMO, sane take is to hold judgement. Lots of mud being slung. No way average Joe’s like is can tell what the real truth is. But the conviction crowd is convinced she would be wrong about the color of the sky.
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This didn’t happen!
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What I think is undisputed:
Rebekah Jones used to work for the state of Florida’s Department of Health, and was responsible for presenting/publishing the state’s COVID information. She accused the state of Florida and Governor DeSantis of presenting misleading data, was fired by the state, and has subsequently been celebrated as a whistleblower. After being fired, she started running her own website to present the “true” COVID data, and even wrote up a report on COVID trends in Florida schools that you can find here. Both the website and the report were obviously filled with errors - many of the presented numbers were ludicrous on their face.
Earlier this year, she was arrested for computer-related violations. I believe the specific crime was that she gained unauthorized access to the state’s emergency alert system, and used it to broadcast unauthorized messages.
Some of the things that I think might be in dispute or that are leading to arguments:
- RJ has a shady past that might lead one to interpret her claims with some skepticism.
- RJ, to the best of my knowledge has offered no evidence that Florida was manipulating COVID data. [This is the issue that I primarily care about.]
- Concurrently with criticizing Florida’s data, RJ has also been very critical of DeSantis’s COVID-related policies. Some people have viewed an attack on RJ as being equivalent to a defense of DeSantis. [I think RJ is not credible and I also do not like DeSantis or his COVID-related policies.]
- The police arrest of RJ was seemingly very bad - the police allegedly showed up to her house and pointed guns at RJ and her family. It isn’t entirely clear how true this is, but I think everyone in this thread agreed that the arrest looked bad.
- RJ took out a restraining order against a journalist who wrote a critical story about her (and who now is working in DeSantis’s press office), then filed an immediate complaint saying that she had violated it. RJ is presenting this as evidence that there’s an outstanding criminal complaint against this person, even though the restraining order was not granted.
For me, the biggest issue is that RJ has gained a lot of influence among people, but I think there are two separate streams:
- Many people appreciate her vocal criticisms about politicians who are too aggressively opening up businesses and schools, dropping or prohibiting mask mandates, etc.
- Many people appreciate her speaking the truth about published COVID data.
As far as I can tell, RJ’s detractors in this thread are entirely focused on the second issue. If Florida was manipulating its COVID numbers, that would be a huge and important conspiracy. But, again, I don’t think there’s been any evidence of this, which is why the detractors are skeptical. RJ’s supporters in this thread appear to be entirely focused on the first issue, which I don’t think anyone is even arguing. Maybe this last part is me over-editorializing because I feel like every time I’m skeptical about RJ’s data claims, it’s been interpreted as a defense of DeSantis for some reason.
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