Florida's health department undercounted COVID cases and deaths, state audit says

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/06/06/floridas-health-department-undercounted-covid-cases-and-deaths-state-audit-says/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/B1819

Florida’s COVID-19 data was so inaccurate, incomplete and delayed during the first months of the pandemic that government officials and the public may not have had necessary information to determine the effectiveness of the state’s COVID-19 precautions and the best plan to fight the virus, according to a state report released Monday.

Covering the state’s pandemic response from March to October 2020, the year-long analysis by the State Auditor General found missing case and death data, unreported demographic details, and incomplete contact tracing as the virus spread across the state. In addition, the report concluded that state health officials did not perform routine checks on the data to ensure accuracy and did not follow up on discrepancies.

Yet one top state health official, Department of Health spokesperson Jeremy Redfern, said the Auditor General’s report was flawed.

Redfern said “some of the conclusions come from (the auditors’) misunderstanding of the purpose of different datasets,” adding that “the report does not address the huge advancements we’ve made in modernizing our reporting systems.”

State auditors reviewed a sample of 2,600 tests taken at three state-run testing facilities and found that state-contracted laboratories failed to return results for nearly 60% of tests. The report did not specify the locations of the three testing sites.

*snip*

[moondust]

1. They were warned.

May 28, 2021:

~
(Rebekah) Jones, who was responsible for building the COVID-19 data dashboard for the Florida Department of Health, was fired last year after raising concerns about “misleading data” being presented to the public, according to the complaint, which was reviewed by the Miami Herald.

In the complaint, filed July 17, 2020, Jones alleged she was fired for “opposition and resistance to instructions to falsify data in a government website.” She described being asked to bend data analysis to fit predetermined policy and delete data from public view after questions from the press — actions she claimed “represent an immediate injury to the public health, safety, and welfare, including the possibility of death to members of the public.”
~
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/05/28/former-health-department-employee-rebekah-jones-granted-official-whistleblower-status/

Who is DeathSentence gonna fire this time?

[crickets]

8. 👆👆

[onecaliberal]

2. In other news, water is wet. It's what they voted for. Not a bug, but a feature.

[NoMoreRepugs]

3. Facts and data are meaningless to this little turd DuhSantis.

[albacore]

4. The "excess deaths" numbers are going to be the only trustworthy data in many areas.

I'm thinking we lost 1.2 million Americans. At least.

[gratuitous]

5. Good news! Paw paw didn't die from Covid

He was just a misunderstanding of the purpose of different datasets according to Jeremy Redfern, who should be pelted with rotten fruit whenever he appears in public.

[Ray Bruns]

6. "Florida's health department undercounted COVID cases and deaths, state audit says"

The hell you say.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. Surprise surprise surprise

[MyMission]

9. I'm shocked!

That this actually got reported. Of course WE here knew it already.

[tclambert]

10. Everybody knows that "counting" has a liberal bias.

So Republicans hate counting. Like they hate science. And history. And fact-checking.

[wolfie001]

11. Gov. DeShitbag

That's all I got. Good night.