A Florida details scientist who claimed she was fired by the state for not doctoring coronavirus figures launched her personal COVID-19 map.

Former state Section of Well being employee Rebekah Jones said she was fired due to the fact she refused to “manually transform information to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”

So now the enterprising Sunshine Stater has developed her own map, related to Florida’s edition, other than for one big added depth: her map consists of report playing cards for every county on no matter if they fulfill the state’s personal conditions for entering the next section of reopening.

Jones told NPR she hopes to give people a resource of reliable details untainted by the politics of reopening.

“I believe I’m uniquely outfitted to consider to enable with that,” she explained, “so that’s what I’m performing. I just I really don’t want people to stress. I really don’t want anyone to sense frightened or powerless.”

By Jones’ calculations, only 4 of Florida’s 67 counties are all set to loosen coronavirus restrictions.

She has mentioned she attempted to increase the report cards to the state’s own information portal, but wellness department officers designed her drop the element when they realized it cast the state’s progress in a negative light.

“When I went to show them what the report card would say for just about every county, amid other things, they questioned me to delete the report card mainly because it confirmed that no counties, pretty a lot, ended up all set for reopening,” she informed NPR. “And they didn’t want to draw consideration to that.”

A excellent requested her to go into the info at the rear of its map and alter the numbers so that the state’s coronavirus positivity score would adjust from 18 p.c to 10 %, generating the point out surface to satisfy its reopening focus on.

Florida entered Stage 1 of its reopening on Could 4, in all counties other than Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach front. It eased restrictions once again on June 5 when the condition declared the counties’ had entered Stage 2.

But the condition is now among the additional than a dozen suffering from a marked resurgence in scenarios.

Currently amongst the most difficult-strike states in the country, Florida registered extra than 2,500 new scenarios in a 24-hour window from Friday to Saturday, according to knowledge from Johns Hopkins. It is registered more than 75,000 confirmed circumstances and approximately 3,000 fatalities.

Jones has attributed the state’s shady actions to incompetence rather than lively conspiracy.

“To me, it did not examine like some type of political conspiracy or some greater directive,” Jones says. “It appeared like persons who envisioned when I introduced in these benefits, the benefits to help the approach they experienced written, and they did not, they appeared panicked, and like they had to determine out a way to make the effects match the approach.”

Florida’s Office of Overall health did not reply to a Put up request for comment.



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