In 2014, state government officials assured residents that their water was safe to drink. It was not. While the coronavirus vaccine is spreading across the country, some Flint residents are wondering if it is safe to take it. Hesitation is particularly high in some black communities, which have been discriminated against in the U.S. health care system (and beyond).
Omar Jimenez traveled to Flint to talk to residents about how the water crisis affected their opinion about the coronavirus vaccine.
CNN’s Go There team asked readers to submit questions about what it was like to report in Flint: How are the residents doing and why are they continuing to be skeptical? And what awaits there if vaccination of vaccines continues?
Can Flint residents still drink safely from the tap? What is the residual impact on children and the younger generation?
In short, yes by federal standards. Does everyone do this? No. In 2018, the government, Rick Synder, said it was no longer necessary to stick to bottled water after years of steady decline in lead and copper levels of above 15 parts per billion in 2016 (a federal threshold acting) to bottom By the beginning of 2018, there are 5 parts per billion.
Although the water is safe by federal standards, the small amount of lead is still lead, which is part of the reason why so many people still choose not to drink right from the tap, including many children who have grown up since 2014. has, and this practice is commonplace. But more immediately, the American Journal of Public Health found that after the city made the decision to switch its water source to the Flint River at the beginning of the crisis, ‘The percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels increased after the water source changed , especially in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Water is a growing source of exposure to lead in childhood due to outdated infrastructure. ‘
The city currently gets its water from Lake Huron.
If the children do not feel the physical consequences of this, the mental still exists. I interviewed a man who told me his young son asked if it was safe to drink from the water fountain when he visited other countries. It’s just an instinct of growing up in Flint over the past ten years.
This is a perfect place to be aware of why some communities are wary of the information being disseminated. What Flint endures and continues to endure is devastating. In what ways can we help?
In all honesty, a large part of this comes from the fact that you can spot misinformation, but also put pressure on the community and pressure to independently verify the numbers issued by city and state officials. Part of Flint that discovered the extent of the problem comes from community-based reporting. Therefore, there are groups such as the Flint River Watershed Coalition, Healthy Flint Research Coordinating Center and the Flint Water Study. The latter exists as an independent research team from Virginia Tech to assist in the study of drinking water issues in Flint.
I’m sure there are groups you can donate to on the immediate side of the issue, but overall it just does not help that what they have experienced is in vain. Flint may not be a forgotten chapter in history, but a reminder of the consequences of saving at the expense of health and the pressure it sometimes takes from a community to promote real change.
Is there anything that amazes you as you report on this story and this community?
Yes, honestly it was the skepticism that still exists. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “Oh Flint HAPPENED, it’s not still happening”, which is true to some extent. The water quality can now be much better. To hear from people that they still do not trust the water was the face-to-face reminder that I had to fully realize the generational impact of a few short years, when this crisis reached its peak.
One of the people I talked to showed me the crockpot she still keeps in her bathroom as a reminder of the time she boiled water just to wash her face. She no longer uses it, but it sits there as a memorial, a tomb of more threatening times. And then, if you translate this mentality into the Covid-19 vaccine, you can imagine why there is hesitation. It is declared safe by about as many medical organizations as you can, but to these people they have been told before that something was safe, and it was not. So it is not that many people will never get the vaccine, but in a strategy similar to the peak of the crisis, they first want to do their own research.
Do the residents you spoke to feel safe about health and safety concerns with those who need to help them stay safe and healthy? Do you see any degree of confidence?
This is a very good question, and overall I would say that the answer is yes. People see the Flint water crisis a lot in the near view as opposed to far in the rear view. I think the level of trust actually comes out of it less than blindly following what the authorities say to them, but rather combining it with their own intuition and community resources.
One woman I spoke to helps manage webinars for Healthy Flint Research Coordinating Center, and it’s part of their mission to allow thousands of people they’ve contacted directly from doctors and other trusted functions in the community so that they can balance between what their power of the state and / or city is told with whom those say they can relate better to. There is trust, but it seems that trust now comes consciously from different sources, as opposed to just one.
What is the standard of care in Flint now during the pandemic? How are the residents treated by the medical community?
The standard of care is generally very much as you would see in most other areas of law. Not perfect, but works. As for Covid, as well as many other places, the country where Flint resides saw an increase in November and December, but was able to get their numbers under control and even now sees less than 100 confirmed cases per day.
As far as the treatment of residents is concerned, I think involvement is taking on a new meaning. Residents are actively seeking more information as those in the medical community increasingly realize how important it is to talk. Even a high school student I spoke to in Flint is involved in more health clubs than I knew during my high school days.
It seems that people, both the community and the health care system, realize that they have a common goal of not just wanting to return to things where they were just a few years ago. While not perfect (and I’m sure I miss individual grievances), those in the medical community participate in webinars, but they do participate in community events, in part because they all need to increase the current challenge and it turns out that it is transparent be the guiding principle.
I would like to know about the diversity in these groups who are hesitant about the vaccine; are subgroups distinguished by education, economics, etc. that may feel different?
Also remember: ‘Drinking water taps manufactured before 2014 may contain up to 8 percent lead in Michigan,’ so those in poorer communities who are more likely to have taps in this category are also less likely to turn first. for what the state can tell them.
For the record, all the vaccines offered by the FDA for emergency authorizations on the market have been proven by numerous careful studies to be safe to use.