can someone give me the cliffnotes on this
A temporary peace order is only extended if the defendant hasnāt been served yet, or if they ask for an extension to get a lawyer or something. Theyāre 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 likeā¦ the āsheās been reported to the policeā¦ā - 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 Joeās 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 didnāt happen!
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What I think is undisputed:
Rebekah Jones used to work for the state of Floridaās Department of Health, and was responsible for presenting/publishing the stateās 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 ātrueā 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 stateās 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 Floridaās data, RJ has also been very critical of DeSantisās 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 isnāt 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 DeSantisās press office), then filed an immediate complaint saying that she had violated it. RJ is presenting this as evidence that thereās 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, RJās 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 donāt think thereās been any evidence of this, which is why the detractors are skeptical. RJās supporters in this thread appear to be entirely focused on the first issue, which I donāt think anyone is even arguing. Maybe this last part is me over-editorializing because I feel like every time Iām skeptical about RJās data claims, itās been interpreted as a defense of DeSantis for some reason.
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But with just cliffs you miss stuff like her writing a 300 page ābookā about the sex she had during an affair.
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Huh?
Where is the evidence of multiple large guns being pointed at her kids? She spent 20 minutes setting up a camera inside while the police knocked at her front door, and her video shows an officer pointing a handgun upstairs when he enters the house before lowering it about 2 seconds later, presumably after seeing the kid.
man come on. Even taking what you say as true, youāre saying itās not true based on the size and number of the gun, not whether or not kids had guns pointed at them.
See what you started?
Lot of people think this thread since the NRO article is this:
Some of us would like more than an NRO article upon which to formulate our opinion.
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Didnāt her version of events say that there were literally a quadrillion covid cases? Shouldnāt that have basically been /thread?
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This is ridiculous and libelous. It was only 1.5 trillion.
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As far as I am aware, no kids at any juncture had guns pointed at them. The closest you can come to this is that an officer pointed a gun upstairs briefly while clearing the house and I think there were kids upstairs somewhere, but thereās no evidence they were in line of sight of the gun. When Rebekah is yelling about āpointing a gun at my childrenā thatās all sheās talking about.
Watch the body cam video. The police are banging on the door and yelling āPOLICE, SEARCH WARRANT, OPEN THE DOORā for 22 minutes (look at the timestamps) before Rebekah eventually does. They are curt with her after that because sheās wasting their time and not obeying entirely legitimate law enforcement instruction and screaming bullshit at them, but theyāre not abusive and they arenāt waving guns around, the only time the officer has his gun up is when he initially enters the house to ensure itās clear.
Thereās no reason to even presume this.
Rebekah is outside in this shot. Police are yelling āMR. JONES, COME DOWN THE STAIRS NOWā. Itās obvious that from Rebekahās vantage point she has no clue whether her children can see the gun or not. The officer saw that upstairs was safe. Whether he saw kids or not who knows.
This is the exchange at the start:
Officer: Who else is in the house, maāam?
Rebekah: My two children, and my husband.
Officer: Where is your husband?
Rebekah: You want the CHILDREN NOW?
Sheās determined to turn this into Gestapo jackboots threatening her children, but what police are worried about is the man somewhere in the house who might start physically resisting them serving the warrant. I think itās pretty reasonable to be in a confrontational, wary frame of mind when the person youāre serving has been refusing to open the door for the last 22 minutes. Like you canāt antagonize police and then complain when they treat it like an antagonistic situation.
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As a programmerā¦ this is whatever imo, itās easy to get weird results like this with a bug in your code somewhere, bugs are inevitable, having them isnāt an indictment of your work. Much worse are those data issues in the paper she put out that we went through earlier (for anyone late to the thread, Dan posted the paper here, read the replies to his post). There she had time to make sure sheād sorted the issues out and the data is still complete nonsense.
Having seen the body cam footage, I donāt think the raid was bad. At the very least, the way it was conducted didnāt seem out of the ordinary. Like the issue of whether itās OK for police to be drawing weapons when entering a house theyāve been refused entry to for the last 22 minutes is beside the point. The issue is whether that marks this raid as out of the ordinary compared to how police normally conduct themselves in Florida. If it isnāt out of the ordinary, then thereās no substance to Rebekahās claims of police harassment, even if you think the way police conduct themselves in Florida is generally outrageous.
Willing to go to any lengths to support your position. Basically gaslighting imo. The cops were just tourists.
A left leaning counterpoint.
This is the most detailed story Iāve seen with regard to what Jones is actually alleging about the data issues, and what she was ordered to do:
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For a scorecard indicating whether individual counties should be opened, she was told to āsimply put a āyesā or a ānoā next to a countyās reopening outlook, without providing the kind of data-bolstered rationale she had figured would go into the decision. Roberson left for a meeting, so Jones evaded that order.ā
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She was told that āunless someone gave a Florida-based address when being admitted to the hospital, they should not be counted as having been hospitalized for the coronavirus.ā
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āshe alleged that positivity rates were depressed because the number of new infections was divided by the negative lab tests, not people testing negative. Because coronavirus patients are tested many times, using tests administered instead of people tested as the baseline made the situation seem better than it actually was, she claims.ā
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There were other changes to the data presentation as well, Jones has alleged. For example, when a patient tested positive, instead of simply reporting the results as soon as they were available, the department created case files, slowing the reporting. Jones believes this was intentionally done to bury any spikes in positive cases in a needless layer of bureaucracy.
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She also alleges that some reopening criteria were changed so that weekly data, not daily data, was considered. That also had the effect of smoothing out any infection increases, Jones says.
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She was told to ārestrict public access to the raw data. āDisable the ability to export the data to files from the dashboard immediately,ā he wrote about two hours after Jones sent her defiant email in response to Pritchard.ā
These are the issues that led her to consider filing a whistleblower complaint "about how Iām being treated, the dashboard mess, etc., for gross mismanagement,ā
She then went on to send out the following message to researchers and media members:
āAs a word of caution, 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,ā Jones wrote, doing little to hide her bitterness. āThey are making a lot of changes. I would advise being diligent in your respective uses of this data.ā
after which she was fired. (Following that last message, Jones said āWhat I meant when I said I donāt expect the same level of accessibility is that they are busy and canāt answer every single email they get right away,ā Jones wrote to her supervisor. āIs this one of those stupid things I shouldnāt have said?ā, which is a completely ridiculous explanation.)
Just to make it clear where I stand: I donāt think Jones is credible, and I donāt take anything she says at face value. I also donāt think that DeSantisās policies (COVID-related or otherwise) are good, and I donāt trust anything he has to say, either. Thereās no reason to believe skepticism with respect to RJ equates to support of DeSantis or anyone else.
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Also to be clear, Hopkins has since changed to that same way of calculating positivity rates, and doesnāt every state only count residents in their numbers? Using weekly data rather than daily data for reopening criteria is a no brainer - really even a 14 day would be better. And the data that was removed from the dashboard was put back up a day later. The emails state they wanted to check the published data against the original PDF copies for accuracy after some cases said they had symptoms on January 1 (months before they could have possibly had a positive test in Florida so pretty likely that data was wrong)
Like, I think Desantis did everything wrong in this, but I honestly question someoneās critical reading skills if you can go through a pro-Jones article and not see where her descriptions of events veer away from the evidence that she provides of those events.
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