A newly revealed gap in Florida coronavirus death statistics suggests the state may have manipulated the numbers to count more deaths before the November election.
While coronavirus deaths are often reported days or weeks later, Florida abruptly stopped counting on October 24, ten days before the election, including deaths that occurred more than a month earlier. Elderly deaths were consistently included in previous data. Governor of Florida. The change comes after the administration of Ron Descentis announced that it would review every suspected coronavirus death before reporting it. The state started including old dances in its daily count from November 17.
The difference was discovered by a professor at the University of South Florida, according to The South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, said he was “surprised” by the distance, but “did not draw any conclusions.” “
The death toll between September 23 and October 20 included 1,128 deaths that occurred at least a month earlier, or 44% of all deaths during that period. When reports of older deaths in the state resumed after the election, a large number of deaths had occurred more than two months earlier, Salemi’s analysis said.
Prior to the discrepancy in the death toll, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Riwakiz announced that he would “conduct an additional review to ensure the accuracy of COVID-19 related deaths” before releasing publicly recorded deaths in the state.
Salemi told Sun-Sentinel that he initially believed the change was due to the state’s vow to review medical examiners or deaths but became suspicious when the state began recording older deaths again in the Middle Ages. November.
“I’m starting to wonder what’s going on.”
Health experts have long warned that the death from the coronavirus is likely to be executed but Desantis and state Republicans allege that the deaths in Florida were exaggerated. Florida health officials did not answer the outlet’s questions, leaving the cause of the mysterious gap unclear.
“There was a limit around the time of the election that it’s hard to know if other things are happening at random,” said data scientist Scott David Hare, who monitors daily reports. “” Why the Health Department has not explained why the leg is inconsistent. It’s confusing when they’re changing everything behind the scenes, when their legs are changing. “
The guidelines for reporting epidemic deaths have been changed frequently by the anti-corruption administration, drawing public outrage. Medical examiners stopped publishing real-time death data reported by local health officials in the state after sounding an alarm in the spring, showing higher death rates than state reports.
In August Gust, when medical examiners worked with a large backlog of outbreak deaths in the state, the administration allowed attending doctors to determine and report coronavirus deaths. The state also released summary of death certificate data from county medical examiners during the summer, but stopped releasing the data after the change.
Republican State House Speaker Jose O’Leary often called the state’s death report in October often “lacking in rigor” and “weakening the completeness and reliability of death records.”
Decentis, who has spent months trying to mitigate the threat posed by the epidemic that killed more than 20,000 Floridians, has been repeatedly accused of manipulating and concealing data to justify the White House’s coronavirus task force’s response to the so-called “insufficient” coronavirus.
A task force report obtained by the Center for Public Integrity showed that the Trump administration had earlier this month called for tougher measures to curb the “relentless spread of the community.” Instead, the state stopped publishing task force reports and Descentis banned cities from implementing mask requirements and limited the ability to spread. On Tuesday, he broke public health recommendations and announced that all bars and restaurants in the state would operate at full capacity for the rest of the epidemic.
Earlier this year, the state also fired data scientist Rebecca Jones, who helped create the Florida Department of Health’s coronavirus data dashboard. Jones claimed he was fired in the spring for refusing to “manipulate” coronavirus data to justify the state’s early reopening, which was denied by Descentis. Earlier this month, armed state police raided Jones’s home, pulling out their guns to seize his computer and electronic device, which he claimed was “corrupt.”
State officials claimed that Descentis was unaware of it before the raid, and Jones suspected that the state’s internal emergency communications system was “first responding and urging others to speak up before the deaths of another 17,000 people.” Jones denied the allegations, alleging that D’Sentis was behind the raid, noting that the judge who approved the warrant was appointed by D’Sentis a few weeks earlier.
“They took evidence of corruption at the state level. They claimed it was about a security breach. This was a dissent. He sent Gestapo,” he wrote on Twitter. “It happens to scientists who do their job honestly. It happens to people who speak the truth in power.”
Despite repeated denials by the administration, the incident led to the resignation of Republican Dissentis on the judicial selection panel, who called the police raid “irresponsible” and Dissent’s denial “imaginary” and “not credible.”
He said he resigned to draw attention to the plight of the people of Florida, who feel the truth about Kovid has not been told.
