Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – A surprising pattern has emerged in Florida’s Covid-19 death statistics – suggesting that the state has manipulated a backlog of uncontrolled deaths, introducing more flexible death counts in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
The point is that the interval between the date of death of a person and the date of death in the calculation declared by Florida is governed by the state. With minor exceptions, Florida resigned on Nov. 24, including the long-awaited death in its daily count, Nov. 3. Their continued inclusion began on November 17, 10 days before the 3rd election, and two weeks after the election.
Result: The number of daily deaths Floridians saw during that time was significantly lower than otherwise.
Ron Descent made the change just three days after the Florida government took office. He will additionally review the deaths of each suspected COVID-19 before adding it to the Florida count.
This information was analyzed by Professor Jason Salemi of the University of South Florida. He said he was surprised by the distance between the reports around the election, but did not draw any conclusions, noting that the Florida death report was “running like a black box” and wanted “the process to be better understood.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel last week asked several state officials to discuss this surprising data pattern. Didn’t answer any questions. Jason Maho, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, did not respond to a number of requests for comment.
Thus, the intent of the state in manipulating data is unclear. It is possible that the Florida Department of Health withheld reports of backlogged deaths as part of its new policy on their review. Whatever the intentions, the change led to a more favorable trend of approaching election deaths.
The state’s reluctance to heed questions about its COVID-19 data is not uncommon. During the coronavirus epidemic, D’Santis and his administration emphasized the importance of the spread of the epidemic in its early days and ordered public health workers not to make public statements about Kovid-1 as elections approached. Sentinel investigation found.
Analysts monitoring Florida’s numbers say they are appalled by the state’s delay in reporting months-old deaths. They also asked the state for clarification, but got no response, he said.
Florida computer scientist Scott David Hare, who discovered the daily COVID-19 data, said: “There was a limit around election time. . “The health department has not explained why the legs are inconsistent. When they keep changing whatever goes on behind the scenes, when the stripes keep changing, that’s when they get confused. ”
While public health experts say epidemic deaths are generally low, Republicans have complained that Florida’s death count was exaggerated, with a total number of other causes being counted. DeSantis speculated that the death figures coming out of his own health department were inflated.
Descentis’ administration has changed the requirements for epidemic death reports, as it was concerned about the growing backlog, and has since begun to question the validity of the rising death toll in Florida:
.Gust. 15: While the county medical examiners were initially responsible for determining whether the death was caused by COVID-19, they were overwhelmed by the case and fell behind. At his request, the state allowed the attending physicians to make those decisions and informed them directly to the state.
Oct. Miami Lakes Republican House Speaker Jose Oliva attacked the health department over reports of COVID-19 deaths reaching the health department because they “often do not last harshly” and “damage the integrity and reliability of death records.”
Oct. 21: Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Riwakiz announced that the state would impose a second level of death review before releasing total deaths, saying many deaths occurred more than a month before the report was made or months after the person tested positive for COVD-19. “To ensure the accuracy of COVID-19 related deaths, the department will conduct an additional review of all deaths. Timely and accurate data remains the top priority of the health department. ”
Things changed in a matter of days. One of the main categories disappeared from the state’s daily levels: deaths more than a month ago. Such deaths have long formed a significant part of the daily average in Florida and other states, as reports of deaths made by doctors do not always come immediately to the health department, instead causing trouble in days and weeks.
The impact of that change was enormous. Consider: In the month before the change from September 23 to October 20, the state is included in the daily in-depth of 1,128 deaths that occurred at least one month ago – accounting for 44% of the deaths reported during that time. But in the weeks leading up to the election, one such death was included in its daily high by the health department.
Did Florida finally face its backlog? That was not the case: on November 17, two weeks after the election, Florida’s daily death count began to include deaths more than a month in a row, and for the analysis of the large number of deaths that occurred more than two months earlier.
The surprising and mysterious reum collection of Backlog Death Reporting came out on Sunday, November 8th. On that day, the state recorded the lowest number of new deaths recorded in several months, at just 15. And that day’s statistics include the largest percentage of backlog deaths. Yet another day – a surprising 74% of deaths reported that day was more than a month old. But since there have been few recent deaths, the total number on November 8 appeared to be the same as the daily counts recorded in the days before and after.
In public that number did not see the actual dates of death. What the public saw: The death toll that fell in the early days of the election, and gradually rose in the days that followed.
The Florida Department of Health has refused to issue a COVID-19 death certificate to scientists or journalists for review. By the end of the summer, the records were released to the public in the form of a summary by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which collects death certificates from the county medical examiner’s offices during a state of emergency. But in August August, when COVID-19 deaths were confirmed by county county medical examiners, the information stopped being released.
Salemi said he felt the preemption gap change could lead to liability from medical examiners, whose employees took a large share of the worklog. Or maybe it came as a result of the new health department’s policy of giving more investigations in each case.
But then in mid-November dozens of untimely deaths reappeared in the state’s daily counts.
“I’m starting to wonder what’s going on,” he said.
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(Staff writer Adelaide Chen contributed to this report.)
