Until April, medical examiners in Florida published a daily update on deaths and causes by county. In April, the state for Florida forced medical examiners to stop that reporting, saying that this information was now “restricted.” Though the state’s death statistics were placed in doubt, the state did maintain a detailed dashboard of COVID-19 cases … until May 20, when the scientist who built and maintained that dashboard was fired. Since then, Governor Ron DeSantis has been making a victory lap around the state, bragging about how great the results were there and Donald Trump has repeatedly pointed out the state as an example to prove that other states should go back to business as normal. On Wednesday, Trump personally fingered Jacksonville, Florida, to be the new site of the Republican National Convention after the mayor there promised that Trump could have “a packed arena” without concessions to the pandemic.
The reopening in Florida has come at a cost. Over the last two weeks, Florida has repeatedly been near the top of the charts for new cases and hospitalization numbers are climbing. And now it appears that there’s even more hiding behind DeSantis’ fudged numbers—like thousands of additional cases, and hundreds of thousands fewer tests.
Fired data scientist Dr. Rebekah Jones has started a new website called FloridaCovidAction.com. The numbers are based on the same public sources that are supposed to be feeding the state pages, but when Jones adds everything up, there are some significant disagreements. Rather than 69,000 positive tests for COVID-19, Jones’ dashboard shows 78,000. And where the state claims 1.3 million tests, Jones shows fewer than 900,000 people tested.
In addition, the new dashboard features information on hospital admissions, ER admissions, and available ICU beds not featured on the state website. Jones’ site also includes a wealth of additional information, like a detailed report card for each county showing which areas are ready for the next stage of reopening (Spoiler: Very few). She has also incorporated cell phone data on travel along and contacts, along with local regulations, to help provide each county with a social distancing report card. No county gets higher than a C, and F is the most common score.
But there’s one action where DeSantis surely scores an A from Donald Trump. As Politico reports, the Republican governor has piled up “980,000 unused doses of hydroxychloroquine”—a treatment which has not been proven as effective in treating any stage of COVID-19.
Trump has insisted that he is taking the drug himself as a prophylactic to ward off the disease: There’s no evidence for that claim. Trump has insisted that the drug is a “game changer” for people who have COVID-19: There’s no evidence for that claim.
But DeSantis proved his Trump loyalty back in April by ordering up a million doses of the drug. The problem is … doctors can read. And what doctors have been reading is the results of multiple studies showing no positive benefit for COVID-19 patients taking hydroxychloroquine or the related chloroquine. Despite a push from DeSantis, only a handful of hospitals have asked to tap the massive stock of the drug which he ran up.
Florida broke its previous record for new cases in a day on Wednesday. DeSantis might want to see if he can exchange his useless tablets for some protective gear, or ICU beds, or better yet … the backbone necessary to roll back his hasty reopening.