Rebekah Jones, Conspiracy Theories, And Faith-Based Reasoning
How a conspiracy theory about what one governor did beat out the reality of what another governor did
On May 13th, National Review released Charles C.W. Cooke’s deep dive into what happened in the lead-up to Rebekah Jones’s termination from the Florida Department of Health (FDOH). Jones, if you are not aware, is the person solely responsible for the conspiracy theory that somehow Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and a host of other officials are falsifying the number of COVID deaths in the state to mask the true effect of his anti-lockdown policies. She claims that during her time at FDOH she was asked to alter the raw data being entered into Florida’s COVID dashboard, the site that reports the number of cases and deaths to the public, and that when she refused to do so she was fired.
Since her firing, she has become internet famous and a favorite of the online Left who want to believe that Florida’s COVID numbers can only be explained by a vast conspiracy involving hundreds if not thousands of people who have all managed to keep their mouths shut. Despite prominent Florida Democrats, including Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz, stepping forward to say there is no truth to Jones’s claims the conspiracy theory still has hundreds of thousands of adherents and mainstream support. The phenomenon even has its own hashtag -- #BlueAnon -- given to it by its critics.
I recommend reading Cooke’s piece, the story is one hell of a roller coaster ride. What is remarkable about it, however, is that anyone could have written it for any outlet. All Cooke did was request a copy of her personnel file, which anyone with a few spare dollars can do. When I realized that’s all he had to do to get this story I chuckled; it reminded me of when Robby Soave wrote the definitive story of the Covington Catholic video for Reason by doing the astonishing work of watching the entirety of a publicly available video.
Yet not a single news outlet chose to do that basic legwork, nor did a single person who pushed Jones’s nonsense into the mainstream. And we’re not talking about parsing if a kid in a red hat smiled the wrong way; Jones and her backers are accusing a sitting governor of falsifying the number of COVID deaths in his state for political reasons. That is an extremely serious allegation which, as Cooke points out, not a single person in the FDOH has come forward to corroborate.
As if that weren’t enough, Cooke goes out of his way to put the stake through the heart of Jones’s core claim
“In her role as the manager of the dashboard, Jones did not have the ability to edit the raw data. Only a handful of people in Florida are permitted to touch that information, and Jones was not among them. Instead, each day she was given a copy of the data and charged with uploading it into the system in a manner determined by the epidemiological team. Had she for some reason decided to alter that copy, it would have been obvious to everyone within seconds of its being compared with the original.”
Well then.
What amazes me is that there is a governor who has been caught cooking the COVID books for political purposes -- the beloved governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. After his ghastly edict that elderly COVID patients must be sent back to their group living facilities, his administration purposely covered up the number of nursing home deaths to keep Trump from weaponizing that information. The Cuomo administration lied to the public and the Department of Justice, the State Health Department released a report that fudged the number of COVID deaths that took place in nursing homes, and then Cuomo’s aides altered the report.
That’s not a crazy conspiracy theory. Cuomo has admitted to doing this. In public.
To put it another way, the Cuomo administration did the exact thing that Jones and her supporters accuse the DeSantis administration of doing. But instead of being livid at Cuomo, who by all accounts is an actual lying grandma killer, the Jones cult would rather chase a crackpot conspiracy theory about DeSantis.
In doing so they give away the game -- none of this has anything to do with the facts of who did what. Those who bought what Jones was selling did so because they felt it must be true. Much like Trump supporters who truly believe the election was stolen because what other explanation could there be for his loss, Jones’s supporters latched on to the conspiracy theory because they couldn’t conceive of any other explanation for Florida not turning into a charnel house.
Two factors drive these sorts of conspiracy theories; loathing of The Other Side and the belief that they are evil people who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. Both of those factors are based on emotion, which is why you can cite facts until you're blue in the face or type until your fingers feel like they are going to fall off and not change a single mind. Cooke’s piece isn’t going to change any of Jones’s supporters’ minds, just like explaining for the hundredth time how Biden won the 2020 election will not change a Trump supporter’s mind.
Such is the way of faith-based belief and the power of cognitive dissonance, and those impulses aren’t the sole provenance of Trump supporters. Conspiracy fever dreams pop up whenever there is an atmosphere of deep distrust and as the Jones story shows, can infect either side of the political spectrum.