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from the who-feels-safe-in-Florida-now? dept.
Armed police raid home of Florida scientist fired over Covid-19 data
Rebekah Jones, the Florida data scientist embroiled in a dispute with the state's Republican governor over the handling of coronavirus figures, had her home raided on Monday by armed police who confiscated her computers.
In a stream of posts on Twitter, Jones posted a video of the raid that showed state police carrying handguns escorting her out of her Tallahassee home. She can be heard saying: "He just pointed a gun at my children," with her husband and two children apparently upstairs at the time.
Jones claimed in her tweets that the raid was the work of Ron DeSantis, the governor with whom she has clashed repeatedly since she was fired by the state's department of health in May in a row over Covid-19 data. She compared the incident to sending "the gestapo", adding: "This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power."
The Florida department of law enforcement confirmed they had entered Jones's house on a search warrant. But in a statement the department said the action was related to a recent computer hack of the health department website, in which emergency response coordinators were sent an unauthorised message.
Also at CNN, The Verge, and The Hill.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2020, @01:10PM
France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, and many other places are also seeing a resurgence. Do you also want to attribute juvenile political explanations to all of them too? And your political explanation doesn't even make any sense. In the US how areas handle the virus is almost exclusively a state responsibility. Federal response mostly comes down to providing funding + closing the borders. Both of which we did.
The reality is that we're going through a plague and, for all of our technological bravado, don't really have any especially amazing solutions that were not previously available. It basically comes down to waiting it out. Oh right, we have vaccinations - brewed up in less than a year, using completely untested technology, for a coronavirus (of which there have been numerous attempts but 0 successful vaccines created), under a major commercial motivation with 0 consequences for side effects - literally, governments are agreeing to immunity waivers. Well my friend, you first. If both you and the virus are alive and well in a year or two, I'll happily join in!