Trump wants America to reopen because he’s more concerned about the economy’s lifeline than he is about the people he governs. That’s a fact.
The president of the United States is also a liar and as such those around him, or those who want to stay in his good graces, also have to lie; think King Joffrey from Game of Thrones.
So when the president commands that areas need to start opening up and science isn’t supporting this idea, what is a Republican state (or in Florida’s case, country because Florida is its own fuck-ass country) to do? Well, you just fuck with the data to make it look like numbers are going down and then you reopen your state and wait for everyone to get sick.
On Monday, it was revealed that Georgia—which just so happens to be run by one of the most corrupt politicians not named Trump—was manipulating the dates of its data to make it look like COVID-19 cases were decreasing when in fact the dates on the data were listed out of order.
And now it looks like the country of Florida has fired a scientist for refusing to manipulate COVID-19 data.
According to Florida Today, scientist Rebekah Jones, “who created Florida’s COVID-19 data portal wasn’t just removed from her position on May 5, she was fired on Monday by the Department of Health, she said, for refusing to manipulate data.”
In an email to Florida Today, Jones claims that she was responsible for creating “two applications in two languages, four dashboards, six unique maps with layers of data functionality for 32 variables covering a half a million lines of data.”
The plan was for this portal to be a one-stop-shop for the people of Florida to see the COVID-19 situation happening in their bizarro-ass country in real time.
“I worked on it alone, sixteen hours a day for two months, most of which I was never paid for, and now that this has happened I’ll probably never get paid for,” she wrote in an email, confirming to Florida Today that she’d been fired from her job as geographic information systems manager for the Florida Department of Health.
Jones added that her termination came after she was asked to change data manually to “drum up support for the plan to reopen.”
Jones announced her termination “in an email to colleagues noting that her department is no longer responsible for updating information on the site ‘in any shape or form,’” the New York Post reports.
“I understand, appreciate, and even share your concern about all the dramatic changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come,” Jones wrote.
“As 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. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
Since Jones’ dismissal, the site has been functioning sporadically and information appears to be missing or hard to access, Florida Today reports.
“Florida currently has 46,442 total cases of COVID-19 with nearly 2,000 deaths,” the New York Post reports.