Tallahassee, Fla. — Rebekah Jones made headlines last month when she was removed from her position as the state's employee in charge of the Florida COVID-19 dashboard
The geographic data scientist claimed she was told to “manipulate” the data.
Now, she has launched her own website showing far more COVID-19 information than she said the state allowed her to report as an employee.
This includes statistics contradicting Florida’s official coronavirus numbers and the push to reopen the state.
The site, named Florida Community Coronavirus Dashboard, can be found at FloridaCOVIDAction.com (click here for the link.)
It looks very similar to the dashboard run by the Florida Department of Health (click here for the link), but shows thousands more people with the virus and also notes that hundreds of thousands fewer people have been tested.
Jones told the Palm Beach Post, "I decided to stop wallowing in self-pity and do something constructive, something useful with the skill set I've been using for so long. People have a right to know what's going on in a straightforward nonpolitical kind of way."
The information her dashboard comes from publicly available state data, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Jones claims that much of the data is buried in thousand-page reports or scattered PDF files.
As of 6:30 a.m. Friday, the Health Department reports 69,069 confirmed cases and Jones’ website shows 75,897.
Jones reports 90 more deaths.
The site also has a link to a GoFundMe account that she set up while she works on her dashboard.
The statement on the account simply says "Florida deserves a community-based dashboard that doesn't hide or fudge numbers."
So far, contributors have donated more than $6,000.
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