DeSantis hires Ohio Uber driver to rig COVID stats

Ron DeSantis examined the sparse resume and erroneous assertions of Kyle Lamb and saw attributes lesser executives might have missed.

It must have been Lamb’s dazzling combination of inexperience and inexpertise that convinced the governor to hire a sports-blogger-turned-Uber-driver from Columbus, Ohio, to analyze Florida’s pandemic stats (bypassing 700,000 unemployed Floridians, some of whom surely boast a comparable dearth of public-health literacy).

Uber’s loss was Florida’s gain. Lamb, 40, announced on his Twitter feed Nov. 6 that he has been hired as a “data analyst on several fronts for them including but not limited to

COVID-19 research and other projects.” His real job is to bend coronavirus statistics to fit DeSantis’ politically convenient supposition that an overblown health crisis has ebbed.

“Fact is, I’m not an ‘expert.’ I’m not a doctor, epidemiologist, virologist or scientist,” Lamb wrote on his internet site, Beyond the Fold. “I also don’t need to be. Experts don’t have all the answers.”

Nope. Experts don’t have all the answers. Although, expert epidemiologists generally have more informed answers about a raging global pandemic than your average sports-blogging Uber driver. (Admittedly, I sometimes turn to Lyft drivers for philosophical insights and restaurant recommendations.)

But Gov. DeSantis has had quite enough of these niggling public-health experts with their fancy med school degrees, questioning the science behind his decision to shrug off masks and social distancing as he lifted restrictions on schools, bars, sports arenas and, especially, Donald Trump’s superspreader political rallies. A know-nothing dilettante like Lamb was just what the doctor didn’t order. His ignorance is Ron’s bliss.

Not that Lamb doesn’t know a thing or two about number crunching. The Miami Herald reported this week that for the last several years, the 40-year-old has tried to squeeze a career out of sports blogging, mostly about Ohio State football, which entails lots of complex computations — yards per carry, sacks per game, days till kickoff.

Still, several of his fellow Ohio State sports journalists and bloggers told the Herald that they were surprised that Lamb, of all people, had been plucked out of obscurity by the governor of Florida. They described him (Lamb, not DeSantis … though … ) as “unhinged,” “a crackpot,” “an Internet weirdo,” “rank conspiracy theorist” and “amateur, basement epidemiologist.” The very virtues that captured the governor’s heart.

Over the last few months, the sports guy has made the oh-so-natural transition to COVID19 fulminator. “As the world has changed … like many I’ve been forced to change with it,” he wrote on Beyond the Fold. “I embrace this. I have no qualms about being a ‘sports guy’ moonlighting as a COVID-19 analyst.”

Neither does the governor, who no doubt was drawn to someone who interpreted coronavirus statistics in a way that supported the Trump-DeSantis to-hell-with-science, no-worse-than-the-flu, no-need-for-mask, end-the-lockdown, what-me-worry approach to the pandemic. For instance, Lamb was as wildly enthused about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 as President Trump and Gov. DeSantis. (Ignoring scientists’ warnings that the drug is ineffective and possibly dangerous as a COVID therapeutic.)

Lamb has tweeted, falsely, that science “never supported masks stopping the spread, but people eat it up like sheep,” Lamb pushes the conspiracy theory that routine deaths are being reclassified as COVID fatalities to jack up the fear. Perhaps his new job will allow him to reassign Florida’s 17,300 COVID fatalities to cause-of-deaths more compatible with the governor’s worldview. His internet assertions also support the DeSantis policy of herding Floridians toward herd immunity — a strategy that Dr. Anthony Fauci (who knows a thing or two about epidemics) has characterized as “nonsense and very dangerous.”

Lamb has slathered his blog and Twitter feed with erroneous stats that support his far-right medical theories. “OH MY GOD. His spreadsheet,” University of Florida professor Emilio Bruna, president-elect of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation, tweeted Tuesday after reviewing some of Lamb’s statistical assertions. Bruna added that if actual data analysts “see this, their heads will spontaneously combust.”

Chronic wrongness was hardly enough to keep Lamb from landing his $40,000-a-year state job in sunny Florida. Not when he intersperses his unschooled coronavirus craziness and ongoing Trump-was-cheated election commentary with all those juicy tidbits about the Ohio State Buckeyes — always a hit down here in Gatorland.

Florida’s pseudo-data analyst promised on his blog, “I hope to peel back the onion layers one tear at a time with COVID-19.”

When the Uber-driving football blogger peels this particular onion, oh, how the tears will gush.