Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop.
Source: Tampa Bay Times
State officials have stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Florida’s medical examiners, which has at times shown a higher death toll than the state’s published count.
The list had previously been released in real time by the state Medical Examiners Commission. But earlier this month, after the Tampa Bay Times reported that the medical examiners’ death count was 10 percent higher than the figure released by the Florida Department of Health, state officials said the list needed to be reviewed and possibly redacted.
They’ve now been withholding it for nine days, without providing any of the information or specifying what they plan to remove.
Dr. Stephen Nelson, the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, said the change in policy came after the state health department intervened.
Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=%40TB_Tmes
= new reply since forum marked as read
be allowed to keep secrets about infection or fatality rates during a life-and-death health crisis.
The one people are focusing on is a sidebar comment in the OP.
For more information--including why the numbers on the lists differ--there's the article the OP refers to: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/11/floridas-count-of-coronavirus-deaths-is-missing-some-cases/
The 10% that's only sometimes is because the state removes non-residents from the list. It's not random. It's a bit strange, but it's not random. Not sure it's necessarily a conspiracy. (Oddly, I'd heard that. Maybe from this article. Maybe from elsewhere. It's the kind of thing that you'd expect Worldometers to reference. They only do so obliquely.
(Worldometer refers its viewers to two sources. Here's #2: https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/ It separates out residents/non-residents for positives, but not for death. Doesn't say who's included in the death count. Source #1 is https://fdoh.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/8d0de33f260d444c852a615dc7837c86 and it's explicit: The death count, which means the death toll in #2 since they're the same number, is residents only. It's not hidden. It's just not highlighted. You need to read and think, "Ah, this is just for residents. What about any non-residents who die in Florida?"
As for the information that's released or withheld, that's tricky. We have a right to know. Then again, if little Jaela Smith, age 12, gets raped and killed while home alone while her mother's at work, the names and details won't be released. And yet we still have a right to know. They take pictures during the autopsy? We still ... But most won't follow that thought through. Newspapers respect the relatives wishes very often. How often do we read of some deceased celebrity that the cause of death hasn't been released? If they release all the information on deceased person who died from COVID-19, very often that's as good as releasing the name.
