4 ms·

Reading the plain text of her letter, there is no accusation of wrongdoing, no cooking the numbers, etc. Rather it is a lot of innuendo. Which data to present

by JackFr 6y ago

Reading the plain text of her letter, there is no accusation of wrongdoing, no cooking the numbers, etc. Rather it is a lot of innuendo. Which data to present and how is always an editorial decision as in the case of every other state’s DOH website and every newspapers dashboard. This is not a whistleblower complaint. It’s only evidence of bad faith on the part of the governor if you come in assuming bad faith to begin with.

Traster 6y ago
Yes, if you read the letter ignoring the context of the direct quotations in the news article then it's not evidence of bad faith on the part of the govorner. What's evidence of bad faith by the governer is the fact that she has told the news organisation: >Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen." But now that you know what she's said to the news reporters, you can see that the context of this email is trying to inform people that the data isn't trustworthy without directly accusing anyone of wrongdoing that may lead to her being fired.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The context of the direct quotations is context that she created. If her perception of the situation is inaccurate, that context will also be inaccurate.
  - kthejoker2 6y ago
    The only facts we know are she was involuntarily removed. The good faith assumptions are: * She was removed for reasons unrelated to manipulating data. * She was not asked to manipulate data. * No data will be manipulated. Surely the people in charge of removing her and identifying her replacement can verify those assumptions?
makomk 6y ago
I think I've got a good guess what data she didn't want removed or changed, and it's not exactly good for her case. On May the 5th, they day she was removed from her position, there was an all-time high spike of 113 reported coronavirus deaths due to Florida reporting a bunch of old deaths all at once: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/15/florida-adds-43-coronavirus-deaths-as-state-continues-to-reopen/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/15/florida-adds... This did not represent an actual spike in deaths which had in reality been declining, but if I remember rightly some people did spin it as deaths increasing due to the lockdown being lifted. Deaths by date reported are conspicuously missing from the current version of the dashboard; it only has dates by date of death, which is far less favourable to the claim that lifting the lockdown is causing an increase in deaths.
- dariusj18 6y ago
  An argument can be made that consistency is more important in these things than revision. If you've always charted the numbers based on the date the death is reported, then to try and change it would necessitate a lot of additional complexity in how the data is used.
- gowld 6y ago
  > if I remember rightly some people did spin it as deaths increasing due to the lockdown being lifted. People claimed that deaths on the day the lockdown ended were caused by the lockdown ending?
- rovolo 6y ago
  I think that using date-of-report is better for lay-people. Pro/cons: - There's a one time spike when the methodology changes = The data lags reality on the ground (true for both date-of-report and date-of-death) + Past dates aren't updated, so there isn't a continuous bias to show a slowdown in the number of new deaths I think that the last point is the most important because it's super easy for people to misinterpret provisional data. People were talking about covid-19 not causing excess mortality because using date-of-death always shows a dip for the present: https://twitter.com/TylerMorganMe/status/1248452375162925057 https://twitter.com/TylerMorganMe/status/1248452375162925057 You can also see the same thing in the top comment on this Euromomo thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866238 > Another very surprising thing is to see no excess mortality in Sweden, a country criticized for a laxer strategy against COVID-19. I was not expecting to see that. That was week 14 for https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ . In fact, week 14's excess death z-score for Sweden was in the "very high excess" category after the data was collected.

by JackFr 6y ago

Traster 6y ago

Yes, if you read the letter ignoring the context of the direct quotations in the news article then it's not evidence of bad faith on the part of the govorner. What's evidence of bad faith by the governer is the fact that she has told the news organisation: >Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen." But now that you know what she's said to the news reporters, you can see that the context of this email is trying to inform people that the data isn't trustworthy without directly accusing anyone of wrongdoing that may lead to her being fired.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The context of the direct quotations is context that she created. If her perception of the situation is inaccurate, that context will also be inaccurate.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  The only facts we know are she was involuntarily removed. The good faith assumptions are: * She was removed for reasons unrelated to manipulating data. * She was not asked to manipulate data. * No data will be manipulated. Surely the people in charge of removing her and identifying her replacement can verify those assumptions?

makomk 6y ago

I think I've got a good guess what data she didn't want removed or changed, and it's not exactly good for her case. On May the 5th, they day she was removed from her position, there was an all-time high spike of 113 reported coronavirus deaths due to Florida reporting a bunch of old deaths all at once: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/15/florida-adds-43-coronavirus-deaths-as-state-continues-to-reopen/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/15/florida-adds... This did not represent an actual spike in deaths which had in reality been declining, but if I remember rightly some people did spin it as deaths increasing due to the lockdown being lifted. Deaths by date reported are conspicuously missing from the current version of the dashboard; it only has dates by date of death, which is far less favourable to the claim that lifting the lockdown is causing an increase in deaths.

dariusj18 6y ago
An argument can be made that consistency is more important in these things than revision. If you've always charted the numbers based on the date the death is reported, then to try and change it would necessitate a lot of additional complexity in how the data is used.
gowld 6y ago
> if I remember rightly some people did spin it as deaths increasing due to the lockdown being lifted. People claimed that deaths on the day the lockdown ended were caused by the lockdown ending?
rovolo 6y ago
I think that using date-of-report is better for lay-people. Pro/cons: - There's a one time spike when the methodology changes = The data lags reality on the ground (true for both date-of-report and date-of-death) + Past dates aren't updated, so there isn't a continuous bias to show a slowdown in the number of new deaths I think that the last point is the most important because it's super easy for people to misinterpret provisional data. People were talking about covid-19 not causing excess mortality because using date-of-death always shows a dip for the present: https://twitter.com/TylerMorganMe/status/1248452375162925057 https://twitter.com/TylerMorganMe/status/1248452375162925057 You can also see the same thing in the top comment on this Euromomo thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866238 > Another very surprising thing is to see no excess mortality in Sweden, a country criticized for a laxer strategy against COVID-19. I was not expecting to see that. That was week 14 for https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ . In fact, week 14's excess death z-score for Sweden was in the "very high excess" category after the data was collected.