Snyder administration still lying about 9 deaths in Flint.
Those of you who have been following the story in Flint know that along side the Toxic lead content, the elevated carcinogenic trihalomethanes, Fecal coliform bacteria (guess where that comes from), elevated color, taste and odor (those are prescribed parameters in the Safe Drinking Water Act, along side turbidity) there has been an outbreak of Legionnaires disease with in excess of 80 people infected of whom 10 died.
The AP ran a story on the outbreak widely quoting a number of members of the Snyder administration are spinning like crazy to deflect and pretend.
"Conclusions that legionella is coming from the public water system without the presentation of any substantiating evidence from your epidemiologic investigation appears premature and prejudice (sic) toward that end," Busch wrote.
This is complete and utter BS, I have investigated over a hundred Legionellosis outbreaks around the world and in all but one case have always found the source. It’s not hard, if you have an initial 40 cases, if you have a hospital that is one highly suspect source, if you have cases not associated with the hospital your epidemiology will point to the source, appropriate testing will confirm the source, genetic typing will match the source to the patient.
The only way you could not achieve this is if you have not collected the correct samples or you simply don’t want to confirm the source.
“The state said it cannot conclude that the Legionnaires' surge is related to the water switch, nor can it rule it out, in part because of too few case specimens from patients.”
There are 10 dead people, autopsies can collect samples, with a population of 10 I could come up with a very good statistical model for the source and a solid match. I have seen it done with as few as three cases and a 9 person control group. Were no samples collected from the hospitalized patients? Sputum is best but blood titers work too. Its fairly traditional to do those as part of the diagnosis. Did some one forget to collect the samples or did some one simply decide that it might be too embarrassing? By the time you have 80 plus cases any half way competent Epidemiologist should be able to solve this.
“Wurfel said it would be "highly unlikely" to find Legionella bacteria around the water treatment plant.”
This is completely false, I have very successfully isolated Legionella bacteria from city water systems through out the US. The sample collection and analysis is slightly more complex but it is not impossible and if one is interested in finding the source rather than pretending that there is no problem then you test the water. Many years ago (20+) I was involved in an outbreak investigation at a hotel that included as civil suite against the water supply company, on the basis that they had failed to warn their clients that there probably was Legionella in the city water supply. It was common knowledge 20 years ago that the city water was the source of the bacteria.
These jokers had a major epidemic on their hands and chose to ignore it, the fact that the governor claims he did not know is either an out right lie or screams of incompetence. The City Manager and the State DEQ are culpable, but the man in charge is the one who should go to jail, they literally killed people
