Jordan did not mention the secret medical program, which is called Medicaid.
Jordan did not mention the Madame Maura Corrigan, (said in a high British accent).
Jordan poorly attempted to speak upon privatization, which means he is part of that crew of Trollie Trolls who like to forage through my archives, because he lacks any form of understanding or sophistication of the concept, beyond seeing it on my blog.
I think this is why no one wants to pick up his work, but, hey, what do I know?
I know Jordan should contact the FBI, since he claims, without any oath, filed in the Great Repository of any Secretary of State or with the right to bear the arms of Great Seal of he U.S. to know what is going on in Flint.
Perhaps, someone already has, but he just does not know that we are all listening, and watching him, lie.
I really do not understand why there is so much false information floating around the internet when it comes to the Cooties, more recognized as, COVID19, the coronavirus.
The Clinton Sparrow Hospital was running lots of trafficking tiny humans operations in blood transfers for, of all things, COVID19 research, under the aegis of JonesDay.
FLINT (WJRT) (4/1/2020) - Flint residents will be under a mandatory curfew beginning Thursday night as the city continues dealing with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The curfew will be in effect from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the next 30 days -- through the month of April. Stores, pharmacies and most other businesses will be closed by 9 p.m., when the curfew starts.
Violations will be considered a misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.
"This is real, ladies and gentlemen," Mayor Sheldon Neeley said. "This is about enacting proactive solutions and protecting life."
Anyone providing or obtaining essential services are exempt from the curfew. Neeley said the definition of "essential" will follow Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's "Stay Home, Stay Safe" order issued March 23.
He said Flint has to step up its efforts as the pandemic continues spreading. Neeley said the next two weeks are critical in Michigan's and the nation's fight against coronavirus.
The pandemic is expected to peak sometime in the month of April, but the number of deaths and new cases in Genesee County continues rising. Genesee County went from no cases two weeks ago to nearly 250 on Wednesday.
"We must remain vigilant," Neeley said. "We must remain proactive with our stance."
He said Michigan's stay home order involves self-governance, but it's not working. Flint officials are receiving reports of people congregating in parking lots after dark, which violates the order, Neeley said.
He promised "a real level of enforcement" at convenience stores and other areas where people have been gathering after dark.
"That is not acceptable. We have to take this serious," he said. "We need to curtail those places that the virus could spread."
Neeley also announced that bottled water deliveries will begin next week thanks to a larger donation from Nestle Waters North America. Anyone who needs water can apply by calling 810-410-2020.
Several churches are assisting the city with restarting home delivery of bottled water.
Michigan State University Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha announced Thursday on Twitter that she has COVID-19 — and took the opportunity to encourage those who have recovered from the virus to potentially help others.
"I tested positive. I'm doing fine," tweeted Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped uncover the Flint water crisis.
Hanna-Attisha added: "If you are recovering, consider donating your plasma. I just signed up." She ended her tweet with the following hashtags: #StayTheFHome #ICantSmellAnything
Her call for plasma donors refers to researchers and physicians who are recruiting COVID-19 survivors to help in the potential recovery of virus patients with especially dire symptoms. Medical experts hope to use the antibodies from donors to help those who are very sick.
The effort is part of the National Convalescent Plasma Project, made up of physicians and scientists from 34 institutions in 17 states, including Michigan State.
This treatment has been used in the past to treat H1N1, SARS, Middle East Repiratory Syndrome and Spanish flu. The move comes after the FDA approved the expedited use of what is known as convalescent plasma on March 25.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Guess who was the law firm representing the investments into COVID19 cures.
Jones Day represented Shanghai GeneoDx Biotech Company Limited, a subsidiary of Sinopharm Group, a leading pharmaceutical company in China, in connection with its investment in PathoFinder Holding B.V. (PFH), which is engaging in molecular diagnostics for the detection of pathogens causing an infectious disease in the Netherlands, by way of purchasing a majority stake in PFH.
JonesDay seems to have also been partnered in COVID19 investments with Sangon Biotech.
Sangon Biotech is a privately owned dynamic biotechnology company. The company was founded in 2003 in Shanghai, China. Sangon Biotech’s primary focus was in the field of oligo synthesis, then Sangon Biotech begun to manufacture various life science products and services. Throughout the past years, the company has developed rapidly and served as a one-stop-shop to our customers in the life sciences field.
Sangon Biotech is committed to innovation and excellence. In an effort to achieve this, Sangon Biotech has continuously directed efforts in R & D and improving the quality of our products and services. Sangon Biotech is proud to offer a breath of products and services to customers worldwide.
Although there are thousands of companies in the world selling life science products and services, Sangon Biotech distinguishes itself from our other competitors in the following five features:
Original manufacturer
Wide range of products and services
Competitive prices for all product lines
Strict quality control for all product lines
Ambitious
Sangon Biotech has a dream to become the world leader in the field of life science products and services. A fast growing history indicates this dream is well on its way to being true!
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this preliminary uncontrolled case series of 5 critically ill
patients with COVID-19 and ARDS, administration of convalescent plasma containing
neutralizing antibody was followed by improvement in their clinical status. The limited sample
size and study design preclude a definitive statement about the potential effectiveness of this
treatment, and these observations require evaluation in clinical trials.
If ever the valiant Mayor Karen Weaver, and I call her valiant for being another maternal voice crying out to provide for the well-being of children, needed one more reason to declare a state of emergency, here it is a quick and dirty cost benefit analysis to justify its request to protect and preserve the best interests of the City of Flint's human capital.
Posterity.
The economic stability for the future of the City has been compromised under the leadership of the State of Michigan.
Under current Michigan Child Protection Law, these children who tested for high lead blood level contents would have typically been immediately removed from the home due to environmental and medical neglect, through a state legal action, and placed under the auspices of the state as wards of the court.
It is called exigent circumstances.
It takes a judicial determination to initiate federal funding in child protection cases, meaning, this "targeted population" would be eligible for the state privatized services of child welfare, billable to Medicaid, wrought with fraud, waste and abuse, as a faith-based, non-profit corporation, excluded and exempt from external scrutiny.
Albeit, economic prudence to address the state policies which have exasperated the ills of child poverty has but all been omitted from the speech of "the elected ones", the matter still stands: the failed model for privatization of child welfare is in full swing.
5. The Michigan Emergency Manager Law has demonstrated, once again, that it is a failed pseudo-privatization model which has intentionally omitted the posterity of a City (a.k.a kids who grow up to become adults) from its purview.
For the ongoing reasons, federal intervention is necessary and it must be swift.
For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?
To find out, all it takes is a prick of the finger, a small letting of blood. If tests come back positive, the potentially severe consequences are far more difficult to discern.
That’s how lead works. It leaves its mark quietly, with a virtually invisible trail. But years later, when a child shows signs of a learning disability or behavioral issues, lead’s prior presence in the bloodstream suddenly becomes inescapable.
According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”
The Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014.
The crisis reached a nadir Monday night, when Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency.
“The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” Weaver said in a declaratory statement.
The mayor — elected after her predecessor, Dayne Walling, experienced fallout from his administration’s handling of the water problems — said in the statement that she was seeking support from the federal government to deal with the “irreversible” effects of lead exposure on the city’s children. Weaver thinks that these health consequences will lead to a greater need for special education and mental health services, as well as developments in the juvenile justice system.
“Do we meet the criteria [for a disaster area]? I don’t know,” she told Michigan Live. But Weaver doesn’t think the city can receive the help it needs without alerting federal officials to the urgency of the matter.
To those living in Flint, the announcement may feel as if it has been a long time coming.
Almost immediately after the city started drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, residents began complaining about the water, which they said was cloudy in appearance and emitted a foul odor.
Since then, complications from the water coming from the Flint River have only piled up.
Although city and state officials initially denied that the water was unsafe, the state issued a notice informing Flint residents that their water contained unlawful levels of trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases.
Protesters marched to City Hall in the fierce Michigan cold, calling for officials to reconnect Flint’s water to the Detroit system. The use of the Flint River was supposed to be temporary, set to end in 2016 after a pipeline to Lake Huron’s Karegnondi Water Authority is finished.
A petition lobbying for the ending the city’s Flint River water supply garnered 26,000 signatures.
Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system.
That call was finally made by Snyder (R) on Oct. 8. He announced that he had a plan for coming up with the $12 million to switch Flint back to the Detroit system. On Oct. 16, water started flowing again from Detroit to Flint.
David Murray, press secretary for Michigan governor Rick Snyder’s office, told The Washington Post that the state has been working on improving the water quality in Flint and other cities for the past year. It has also offered more than $10 million in financial assistance to pay for a temporary switch into the Detroit system while the connection to Lake Huron is being prepared.
“Flint residents need to have access to safe, clean water,” Murray wrote in an email to The Post. “Gov. Snyder and the administration have been working closely with the city to focus on health issues affecting children and other city residents, and address water infrastructure challenges.”
He added that while Flint’s water is currently safe to drink, “some families with lead plumbing in their homes or service connections could experience higher levels of lead in the water that comes out of their faucets.” An action plan created by Snyder in October includes free water testing, free water filters and the accelerating of corrosion controls in the drinking water system, according to Murray.
For the parents of children who may have been affected, such actions were accompanied by the sense that they had come too late.
These parents and other Flint residents filed a class-action federal lawsuitagainst Snyder, the state, the city and 13 other public officials in November for the damages they have suffered as a result of the lead-tainted water. The suit, which claims to represent “tens of thousands of residents,” alleges that the city and state officials “deliberately deprived” them of their 14th Amendment rights by replacing formerly safe drinking water with a cheaper alternative that was known to be highly toxic.
“For more than 18 months, state and local government officials ignored irrefutable evidence that the water pumped from the Flint River exposed [residents] to extreme toxicity,” the complaint reads.
“The deliberately false denials about the safety of the Flint River water was as deadly as it was arrogant.”
Calling officials’ conduct “so egregious and so outrageous that it shocks the conscience,” the complaint cites the specific experiences of a few plaintiffs and their families, all of whom allege they have been challenged by similar health ailments since high levels of lead and copper entered their bloodstreams.
These conditions include skin lesions, hair loss, chemical-induced hypertension, vision loss and depression. Of the four families described in the complaint, two had ceased to drink Flint water after a certain point — and used it only for washing and cooking — but still said they were exposed to many of the same ill effects.
Snyder’s press secretary, Murray, wrote in an email to The Post that the administration disagrees with points in the suit, but declined to discuss details of pending litigation.
As the Detroit Free Press reported in October, avoiding Flint water became a way of life for the city’s residents.
Those who could afford it opted for bottled water, buying it by the gallons. Those who couldn’t spare the money drank it straight from the tap all the same, knowing that they would be paying for it later. When it came to bathing, some slowly filled bathtubs with pots of boiled water for their children.
(The city issued a boil advisory in September 2014. This recommendation runs contrary to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on lead in drinking water, which state that heating or boiling water will not remove lead. In fact, “because some of the water evaporates during the boiling process, the lead concentration of the water can actually increase slightly as the water is boiled,” according to the CDC.)
LeeAnn Walters, a Flint resident and mother of 4-year-old twins, took every precaution after blood tests revealed that the level of lead in one of her sons had soared after the switch to Flint River.
“I was hysterical,” Walters told the Free Press. “I cried when they gave me my first lead report.”
She had feared lead was the problem when her whole family developed rashes and her son stopped gaining weight.
Now, Walters said, when her children experience problems as they grow up, she will always wonder whether things would have been different — if their lives would have been better — if it weren’t for the water.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a hero in more ways than one.
To begin, she was able to successfully introduce empirical science into Michigan child welfare policy making.
The numbers made the argument. As there is an increase in the levels of lead in the water, there is a direct and perfect correlation with cognitive and psychological developmental disabilities in children as well as an adverse effect in the economic well-being of the population. This is well documented, yet was blatantly ignored by the state. Here is why:
It almost seems the Department of Environmental Quality was creating conditions to solicit the federal government on securing funding to repair and update Flint's water system under a private contractor, but who am I to make such a sensational statement?
Medicaid in child welfare has no oversight mechanism and its billing is easily manipulated which makes this a political issue. Child poverty and its resulting disabilities maximize revenue for its privatized, not-for-profit programs under the Medicaid expansion.
There is no reason why DEQ could not confer with DHHS when issues dealing with the safety and well-being of children were raised and slammed on the table to be addressed by the Doctor and her team. These administrators need to be held accountable for intentionally allowing children of Michigan to suffer. There needs to be an investigation and public hearing to find out why this was allowed to happen.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha uncovered another Medicaid fraud scheme in child welfare, and that is what makes her a real hero. Flint doctor makes state tell lead truth
Spokesman apologizes for questioning results
Under the steady gaze of a watercolor giraffe and tissue paper butterflies, a Flint pediatrician and mother of two last month forced the state of Michigan to snap to attention.
But getting the state to concede the probability that Flint's water is poisoning its children with lead —after months of assurances from both city and state officials that the water is safe — was far from easy.
It required Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, 38, to side-step bureaucracy. It meant awkward conversations and putting her hospital —city-owned Hurley Medical Center — smack-dab in a political minefield.
And it meant checking her data “a zillion times,” she said, then second-guessing herself to the point of being physically ill when a state spokesman questioned her credibility.
Just hours after state officials acknowledged her data, Hanna-Attisha felt equal parts exhausted and vindicated — at one moment laughing at congratulatory e-mails and comments from colleagues (Maybe they'll give you a lead key to the city, one had quipped), at another reciting sobering statistics about the life-long damage from lead poisoning: irreversible brain damage, development delays, speech problems, a boosted risk for behavioral issues, serious chronic conditions, to name a few.
"It has been such a physiologic response," she said of her look at the numbers and the state's reaction. She sat in her office, where children's artwork hangs haphazardly on the walls. A pink-lettered sign on her door — This is my fight song, it reads — pays homage to Hurley's youngest cancer patients.
"At times I want to cry and then I’m so happy," she said.
But then Hanna-Attisha,a pediatrician for many of Flint's poorest families whose training and experience has focused on environmental toxins and health disparities, shook her head.
"But then I’m tearful because how could this have happened in 2015 when all these regulations are in place (to ensure clean water)? For a population that has every burden in the world already, this is the last thing they needed," she said.
In retrospect, Attisha served as the canary in the coalmine in this latest public health crisis — the doctor who spotted a problem and wouldn't let it go until others paid attention, said Dr. Eden Wells, the state’s chief medical executive.
"She was a doc on the front lines who knows to pick up the phone ... rattle some cages and say 'Hey, come here, we’ve got a problem,'" Wells said.
It began over a dinner party with high school friends Aug. 26.
Among Hanna-Attisha's guests was a friend who played piano at her wedding and is also a water-quality expert. The conversation turned to the issue of the drinking water. Have you looked at kids' blood-lead levels? the friend asked.
Hanna-Attisha was not only intrigued, but also perfectly positioned for such a data dive.
She heads the pediatric residents program at Hurley and is a pediatrics and human development professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She sits on the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, too.
In short, she lives as much on the research side of medicine as she does the clinical side.
So she knew that routinely drawn blood-led level data existed for thousands of Flint-area children, especially those on Medicaid or who live in high-risk areas for lead exposure. The following week, she turned to the Genesee County Health Department for its blood-lead level data.
She was disappointed. Test results are kept in individual patient files and could not be easily analyzed, Genesee County health officer Mark Valacak told Hanna-Attisha.
Undaunted, she asked the state for its analysis of the same blood-level data for Flint.
In the meantime, local and state officials were facing mounting pressure from residents who had already complained that the water smelled and tasted funny.
In mid-September, a Virginia Tech researcher and lead expert, Marc Edwards, concluded from his testing of Flint water it was 19 times more corrosive than Detroit water. And even though repeated testing at Flint's water treatment plant had detected no lead and testing in homes had registered lead at acceptable levels, according to the state, Edwards wrote on his web site, www.flintwaterstudy.org, that his own test results suggested an undeniable presence of lead in water drawn from Flint homes.
While she waited for state data, Hanna-Attisha began sorting through Hurley's own records — a total of 1,746 test results from Flint children to compare against 1,640 results from elsewhere in Genesee County. The results were sobering: The number of Flint children with elevated blood-lead levels — 5 micrograms per deciliter or more — jumped from 2.1% in the 20 months prior to Sept. 15, 2013, to 4.0% between Jan. 1 and Sept. 15 this year. In certain ZIP Codes, the change was even more troubling, she said — jumping from 2.5% of the children tested to 6.3%.
The change correlated roughly to the timing of the city's switch from using Detroit water to water that would be temporarily drawn from the Flint River.
She and her research assistant kept rechecking the numbers — often late into the evening.
One night, "her baby is crying and I’m like 'Can you run that p-value one more time?'" she said, chuckling.
By the time Hanna-Attisha went to Hurley's CEO, Melany Gavulic, public panic was high. Community organizations were handing out filters and bottled water. Community leaders blamed a state-appointed emergency manager for changing water systems. It's an election year too for the city.
It was a “politically messy situation,” Hanna-Attisha told her boss. Gavulic was clear, Hanna-Attisha said: Kids' health comes first.
On Sept. 24, Hanna-Attisha went public with her results.
The response from the state, she said, was startling. Her research was dismissed and her comments called "unfortunate."
Brad Wurfel, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, repeated a familiar refrain: Repeated testing indicated the water tested within acceptable levels.
Hanna-Attisha said she crawled into bed that night, physically ill.
"We checked our data a bazillion times ... but when you hear (the state's dismissal) on national news, how can you not doubt yourself?" she said.
She wasn't the only one surprised. Valacak, the Genesee County health executive, said he, "took offense ... in part because I know how dedicated she is and I know the quality of her character."
That Monday, Valacak emailed state health officials. Among his questions: Why would the state's analysis include non-Flint residents? On Tuesday, he pushed again for an answer. On Wednesday: "Any update?"
He got no answers, he said: "It was frustrating."
At the same time, Hanna-Attisha had stepped up conversations with Wells, who had taken her post as the state's chief medical executive in May. The two women knew of each other and had even stood together earlier this year to promote immunizations.
Wells, who leads the preventive medicine residency program at the University of Michigan's school of public health, said she'd heard media reports about Flint's water. She balanced those against water-quality tests indicating the water was safe. Moreover, a look at county-wide data didn't trigger any alarms.
Now, she was alarmed by a closer look at Hanna-Attisha's findings.
In several conversations, Wells and Hanna-Attisha compared the pediatrician's analysis against that of the state epidemiologists. Among the differences: The state's number included kids from outside Flint — those who wouldn't normally drink Flint water. Some had Flint addresses but lived outside city limits.
As September drew to a close, state health epidemiologists reanalyzed their data, eventually confirming Hanna-Attisha's results. Wells saw a yellow Post-it note from her staff on her keyboard when she walked in at 7:30 a.m. Oct. 1. Her own data analysts had confirmed Hanna-Attisha's findings. She walked down the hallway to find Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. They'd have to let the public know — and fast, the two decided.
That same day, Valacak and Genesee County commissioners declared a public health emergency. Commission chairman Jamie Curtis said he'd simply had enough. Dr. Hanna-Attisha's data couldn't be ignored, no matter what state authorities said water testing indicated. "In six years I don’t want 5- and 6-year-olds going to school with lead poisoning," he said.
Valacak said he got a call the next day — Friday, shortly before the state news conference. Dr. Hanna-Attisha's numbers had been confirmed, he was told.
At 1:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, Flint Mayor Dayne Walling joined state officials — environmental, health, and public relations — at the microphone in front of a packed room of reporters.
"We understand many have lost confidence in the drinking water. We need to build that back. We need to do that more," Dan Wyant, of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said in front of a line of cameras. Reporters tapped away on keyboards. Outside were protesters.
Quietly in the back of the room stood Hanna-Attisha, She leaned over to Brad Wurfel, the state spokesman who a week earlier had called her work “unfortunate" in a time of “near hysteria."
You called me irresponsible, Hanna-Attisha recalled saying to him. Wurfel said he was sorry.
"I had the opportunity to apologize ... I was grateful for the opportunity to do it," Wurfel told the Free Press later. "I will be the first to say, I came on a little strong on this because I believed the numbers we had in the moment."
Hanna-Attisha, whom Gavulic called "definitely one of our superstars" even before her recent spotlight, said she and other researchers aren't done. They want to specifically map blood-lead levels throughout the city's neighborhoods, and they want to test for blood-levels in cord blood from Flint's newest babies.
Exhausting? Yes. Ready to stop? Never, she said: "Because this is what matters. This is what we do ... This is why we're here."
I think Richard Baird paid him and his friends to lie.
