In the company of death, by Rebekah Jones

Coming soon(ish)

As you all likely know by now, I’ve been slowly working on a book about my experience in Florida since 2021 when I first met my agent.

Now, we finally have a title: In the Company of Death

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Not only will my book cover the chaos of the early pandemic days, but also the cost of doing good, public science in defiance of powerful enemies, the trauma of becoming a whistleblower, and life after becoming a “hero.”

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Continue below to read an excerpt from Chapter 1: The Trouble with Truth.

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When the first whispers of a strange, shadowy illness began to stir in late January of 2020, I was already on edge. The world seemed caught in a fragile lull before the storm, as if the air itself held its breath. The virus was no longer just a distant rumor out of Wuhan, China — it was a silent, invisible threat, moving faster than anyone dared admit. In my small office within the Florida Department of Health, I saw the data flicker on my screen, numbers and patterns that spelled a warning no one was ready to hear. I moved swiftly, as if speed alone could outrun the coming disaster.

I went to my superiors, my voice steady but urgent. “We need to start telling the public what’s going on.” Yet the room responded with hesitation. “We need to be careful,” they said. “We don’t want to cause panic.” Their eyes reflected something I had learned to recognize — a mixture of disbelief and political caution, the paralysis of systems built to avoid upheaval rather than confront crisis. The machinery of government, vast and deliberate, stalled when faced with urgency. Days slipped by as I pushed for testing protocols, for data transparency, for clarity in communication. But the doors stayed closed.

The virus, unbound by bureaucratic constraints, spread like wildfire. It rippled through nursing homes, swept across hospitals, crept into every corner of our state. Behind my desk, the numbers climbed, each one a life, a family, a story. I begged for permission to share data — to provide researchers with the tools to track the outbreak, to arm journalists with facts to hold the public safe. Yet the approvals never came. I was told to wait, to hold the data close, to trust the process. I could feel time slipping, precious hours bleeding away.

In those moments, I understood that this was not just a fight against a virus, but a battle against fear itself — fear of truth, fear of consequences, fear of losing control. The data, so often portrayed as cold and clinical, was in fact a living testament to human suffering. And yet it was being shaped, molded, censored in the service of politics. My conscience gnawed at me, each withheld report a silent betrayal of the people we served.