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Rebekah Jones: The Left in a Nutshell
This is part of Everyone Blog About Rebekah Jones Day.
So a few weeks back, I saw a link to a fascinating Human Events article by Christina Pushaw. In it, she exposed the celebrity “whistleblower” in the Florida Department of Health. According to the media narrative, Rebekah Jones was a Ph.D. COVID-19 data scientist who revealed that Florida’s success against COVID was all smoke and mirrors, a coverup of massive deaths. The reality is less noble:
“NPR describes Jones as a “top scientist” leading Florida’s pandemic response. In fact, Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged. She has a Master’s in geography from Louisiana State University, where she worked until she was fired. She was arrested in 2016 while, reportedly, trespassing on campus and attempting to steal computer equipment from her former workplace. She then lectured at Florida State University (FSU) and began researching tropical storms for a dissertation, but never earned a Ph.D. as she was suspended and fired in 2018 after her former student accused her of sexual cyberharassment. Before her termination from the DoH, she was a geographic information systems manager, overseeing the COVID-19 web portal.
It’s therefore misleading to imply Jones has specialized knowledge of infectious disease. Florida’s top Democratic official calls her “Dr. Rebekah Jones,” but Jones is no doctor. Nor is she an epidemiologist, virologist, statistician, or public health professional; the DoH has a highly qualified team of those. A technical manager, Jones didn’t have the authority or expertise to decide unilaterally how to visualize data. But when experts disagreed with her, she assumed they were wrong—or deliberately deceiving the public.”
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the system that powers pretty much any online map, as well as any system that analyzes data based on geographic location. I have a good friend who is extremely talented with GIS, with a degree in Urban Planning. This can be useful for mapping epidemics, but it’s not epidemiology or even biostatistics, much less medicine. To be blunt, I’ve taken more epidemiology and biostatistics coursework than Rebekah; I doubt she could even explain the difference between incidence and prevalence without using Google. The comparison I’d offer is this is like the IT guy who made the electronic medical record system for a hospital offering medical opinions.
What’s even more striking is a pattern of entitlement and narcissism in all of her other positions. At LSU, she was busted for trespassing and getting in a fight with a police officer. At FSU, she went into full insane stalker mode toward her ex-boyfriend, an undergraduate at the time. That’s a power imbalance, so a big problem for a workplace relationship, that got her fired. She ended up with an injunction to stay away from the undergrad’s home or the campus, as well as to take her medications. Naturally, she violated it and ended up in court. She published a 342-page manifesto attacking the undergrad, surely a sign of her resounding mental stability. She tried her hand at lawfare, including a paternity claim and a prose nuisance lawsuit. Later, she published sexually explicit images of him on a website as a form of revenge, trashed his car, and generally acted like the ex from hell.
This got her in legal trouble. She is currently facing charges for stalking.
That’s not her only legal problem. After she was fired from the Florida DoH for insubordination and generally being difficult / entitled, she is believed to have hacked into government computers and hijacked an official notification service. She used an emergency alert service to transmit propaganda. She was charged with hacking, and her computer seized as evidence. She claimed these were Gestapo tactics by DeSantis. I can understand why she thinks that – many Democratic governors and prosecutors use just such an approach. (see the Wisconsin raids on TEA party activists for an example)
In all of these cases, she portrays herself as the innocent victim. Naturally, when she saw the article in Human Events, she decided to file for a peace order in Maryland, and try to shut it down. This brought it on the radar of bloggers Hogewash! and Stacy McCain, who had previous dealt with a similar drama involving terrorist and Democrat political black ops guy Brett Kimberlin. I have written in detail about Brett Kimberlin before here, if you want the full details. Stacy McCain came up with the idea of Everyone Blog About Rebekah Jones Day in order to push back on the lawfare. As I despise lawfare and appreciate good journalism, I am doing my part.
I ask you, could you find a more fitting specimen of the Left?
Published in Journalism
I went and searched for a photo. Color me surprised. She looks nothing like I expected based on her actions. Books. Covers. Etc.
“Data Scientist” is two audacious claims glued together.
Maybe it’s my nursing background, but she fits the bill. White females in her age group tend to be a little off their rocker. Don’t let the looks fool you. Sometimes the better looking ones are the craziest. I think they have been used to getting by with anything when they were younger based on the looks. Now you are an adult and have to prove something. What’s that saying, eventually you have to have a conversation?
I wonder if being pretty has something to do with her mental state. Perhaps she went far on her looks initially, but when it came time to perform and she couldn’t, she snapped . . .
That, and she was an unelected employee of the State, and expected to follow the policies of whomever its citizens elected as Governor at any point in time. That gives her no right to determine which policies she would follow and which she would act on her on whims.
She saw this as an opportunity for broad media exposure and adulation from the Trump-hating culture for doing nothing but being insubordinate. If it was that awful to her conscience, she should have resigned. She preferred the limelight and potential money. She is just an older, and prettier, Greta. Sad.
It makes you realize just how pervasive and pernicious is Amerikkka’s systemic sexism/racism/homophobia when you see all the mindless, criminal, vicious things it has forced this poor woman to do.
Agreed. And that reminds me of what this same Amerikkka of the Left did to Officer Kim Potter (which I wrote about here).
This woman’s writing reminds me of Meghan Markle. Similar personalities. Next she should be on 0prah.
Sometimes it just means “I make Excel spreadsheets.”
Or somebody paid to attend the same meetings with programmers and analysts–and nod.
I’m in favor, but it would have to be a large nutshell, wouldn’t it?
Indeed. Emphasis on the Nut
Data steward is probably an accurate term: normalize disparate data sets using Excel, merge for import, import the data, fix anything that kicks out, and wash/rinse/repeat.
Yeah, not a scientist. A technician.