| We only have a soundbite from one side of the story, we have no idea what really happened. Communication is always political, and how information is represented is important, and public opinion matters. For example in Quebec, there are 'big numbers' of cases, but almost 80% of the deaths are in long-term-care homes. So you could have one person who doesn't want that data to be highlighted, while some other person does because frankly, that information might frame Covid as ultimately being less risky and yet, it's more transparent. Hydroxychloroquine is another kind of example - in reality, there may be some benefit for this, but it's really not helpful to have the general public tweeting about it, because it's not generally useful, and the impact will be overwhelming on health officials and cause shortages for those non-covid people who really need it. So the information is either suppressed or 'led' in the direction that public health and safety officials want. So if the state official was literally trying to get someone to literally just change the data and make it look better, this is obviously going to be a whistleblower case. But this may not be the situation. Public communication is hard. Trump is probably the anti-example. |
Everything is marketing, and I would certainly say it's plausible that a developer that was this much in the spotlight would be steering the conversation to at least frame him or herself in a positive light if not outright promote their politics (even if that is just one of transparency/government accountability).