THREAD: Former Florida DOH employee Rebekah Jones will be tweeting the timeline of when she claims she "was first asked to fudge the data and refused."

This is a fact-checking thread.

Sources:
Personnel File: …https://rebekahjonesmanifesto.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/labor_relation_file-merged-3.pdf
Email Communications: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19OW41YnLcwEW9W8axmuQA-7VNwTfH7z0

Jones claims that she was "updating the data" for the Florida DOH.

Fact-check: Jones did not have write access to Merlin ( http://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/disease-reporting-and-management/disease-reporting-and-surveillance/surveillance-systems.html), FL's internal database of disease case reports.

Epidemiologists compiled data for her, and she uploaded it to the public dashboard

To clarify:
"Merlin": Florida's database of reportable disease case reports
"The Dashboard": Florida's COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard, a public website built with ArcGIS https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429

Jones administered the dashboard, not the original data.

Rebekah Jones says "There was no one else to do my job."

Fact check: Jones' title was "GIS Manager." She administered the COVID dashboard.

However, Jones was not the only GIS Manager at @HealthyFla. Chris Duclos, who had been at DOH since 1996, also had admin privileges.

Jones says that she managed GIS for all of @HealthyFla

Fact check: While Jones administered the COVID dashboard, Chris Duclos was also a GIS Manager, and had seniority, with his tenure dating to 1996

Jones was moved closer to the epidemiologists, who generated the data for her.

Fact Check: Additionally, there is no evidence of "Leadership" (names not stated) wanting to email less to avoid public records requests.

Many emails were sent after April 24, 2020.

"A geographic information system (GIS) is a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing data." To learn more about GIS, click here: https://esri.com/en-us/what-is-gis/overview

As Jones herself has previously pointed out, geography is not data science.

April 24, 2020, 6:51 PM ET

By all accounts, Rebekah Jones was working long hours to build and update the Dashboard.

However, Jones never had a responsibility (or ability) to maintain Florida's data systems. That is not the job of a GIS Manager. http://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/disease-reporting-and-management/disease-reporting-and-surveillance/surveillance-systems.html

April 24, 2020, 6:51 PM ET

Jones includes herself with the epidemiology team.

This is fallacious: The epi team's job was to determine reopening metrics; Jones' job was to display the info on the dashboard.

These are real, but different, jobs.

Jones' tweet does not have any accompanying documentation. Was she told "the state was going to reopen," or was she told that they would LIKE to reopen, and that the epi team will be determining metrics?

Of course, every state created reopening metrics.

Here are some emails demonstrating the delineation of roles:
- A team of epidemiologists determined the reopening criteria.
- Rebekah Jones figured out how to display their data on the Dashboard.

Epis produced the data. Jones uploaded and displayed it.

April 24, 2020

The emails that Jones describes here are true, though she did not include images of them. Here are a few other related emails, for context:

April 25, 2020, 7:56 AM ET

Jones posts partial text of an email from Carina Blackmore (State Epidemiologist, Director, Division of Disease Control & Health Protection at Florida DOH)

Jones excluded an image of the entire email, but it has been obtained via record request:

The recipients of the email discussed by Jones:
Thomas Troelstrup, MPH: Surveillance Section Administrator, Bureau of Epidemiology
Leah Eisenstein: Data Analyst
Scott Pritchard: Senior Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiologist and Public Health Manager
Rebekah Jones: GIS Manager

More context: On July 8, 2020, Treasure Coast Newspapers published this op-ed by Rebekah Jones.

It includes the quote: "I was the sole creator and publisher of that data."

Fact check: Jones did not create any COVID data. The epidemiology team did.

https://www.tcpalm.com/story/opinion/readers/2020/07/08/covid-19-data-reporting-florida-unreliable-opinion/5393098002/

Jones presents an image of herself as the source of the true Florida data.

Fact check: She was one of many GIS admins. GIS admins do not create data.

This DM explains all of the people who actually produced the data.

She essentially takes credit for the work of 1000s of people