Today is a new day and that means it’s time for a new Ron DeSantis conspiracy theory.

The Florida governor has become public enemy #1 over the last several months, with even the White House flailing about in a vain attempt to attack him. The setup for that has been the Delta variant surge, which is now starting to happen in other, more heavily mitigated states, providing more evidence that spikes are seasonal and not the lack of some magic government measure like a mask mandate.

So here we are, with Florida appearing to be on the downward slope while others rise, and that means it’s time to claim he’s lying about the numbers again. Here’s the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s idiocy on full display.

Florida changed how it reports COVID statistics. The result? The pandemic appears to look less severe, with fewer recent deaths https://t.co/kQnO7niDLb pic.twitter.com/K0DluQVTna

— South Florida Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) August 13, 2021

Read the paragraph above and see if you spot the issue.

According to this newspaper, the scandal here is that Florida changed how they report data (I believe that change occurred at the beginning of the year) to the CDC to be more accurate. Charting deaths based on the day they actually occur is objectively a better way to track deaths than large, out-of-context dumps on various reporting days. That’s why the red line is so much more fluid, sometimes showing itself above the green line and sometimes below.

Given that, the Sun Sentinel’s accusation is asinine. They claim that the change makes it “appear” that deaths are decreasing, but if deaths are being reported on the days they actually happened, then they are decreasing. The red line is a truer picture of reality. Meanwhile, the green line is beholden to whenever a report is made, with deaths in those reports sometimes occurring weeks earlier due to late reporting.

Now, you might be asking yourself why they chose this point in time to make this allegation. They did so to extenuate the divergent lines that exist at this moment, insinuating that DeSantis is “lying” about COVID deaths. That’s been a popular conspiracy theory in various forms for over a year, despite no evidence to back it up. But, if we were to wait another week or so, you’d see the green line and red line merge again just like you did in past months.

Regardless, the data that’s supposedly being hidden here isn’t even being hidden. If you want to see the other formulation based on report dates and not the actual date of death, Google “Florida COVID deaths,” and the chart pops right up.

To wrap this up, this is another cheap hit job by a Florida newspaper that can’t keep its own biases in check. These media outlets are no better than their national counterparts. Nothing is being hidden here, and every death is being reported. But that won’t stop the conspiracy theorists from running wild, and that was the Sun Sentinel’s goal.