The Ohio Star’s Jack Windsor Points to Partners in Health’s Contact Tracing Contract and Ties to Social Justice

 

Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed The Ohio Star Managing Editor Jack Windsor to the newsmakers line.

During the third hour, Windsor discussed his recent article where he discovered that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a contact tracing contract with a group that receives its donations from a George Soros foundation, the Clinton Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He stated that he is still seeking to find what the “gift” is between the state of Ohio and the company since the contract has been signed in late February.

Leahy: We are joined now by the man The New York Times fears and Governor DeWine wants to dodge. Governor DeWine of Ohio. Managing editor of The Ohio Star, Jack Windsor. Good morning Jack.

Windsor:  Michael Patrick Leahy. Good morning sir. Thank you for choosing me this morning.

Leahy: We are always delighted to have the man that is feared by The New York Times as we expand our conservative media empire and we are asking the questions that no other liberal media outlet will ask. I think you are the guy that Mike Dewine the governor of Ohio doesn’t want to hear from. You had a question for him yesterday at the press conference. Tell us what the question was and then I want to know what his answer was.

Windsor: So my question had some background to it. Five Texas Republicans sued Texas Republican Governor Abbot over $295 million contact tracing deal that was signed during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in Texas. And legislators there say the governor skirted separation of powers agreeing to a contract without following state statutes.

I have been waiting for months now on information about a contract with a company called Partners in Health. Partners in Health is providing inside guidance regarding Ohio’s contact tracing. And I was assuming it was a multi-million dollar contract and our audience is interested in understanding the length of the contract and the value of the contract.

My question to the governor was how much are we obligated to pay? How much have we paid Partners in Health? And how long is the contract? And the answer I got was I don’t know that answer but we can certainly get you that answer. And I don’t see why we can’t get that answer to you by Thursday. Keep in mind we are five months in. And this agreement appears was signed in probably February or March of this year.

Carmichael: Jack, this is Crom Carmichael. Question for you on contact tracing. How exactly does the government claim the contact tracing works? And that it’s been beneficial and that it protects people’s health privacy?

Windsor: Well you know the privacy issue is in an issue out of the gate. And I’ll address the other stuff. Not only is it a privacy issue to a lot of our listeners and viewers, it gets right in between that confidential doctor-patient relationship. And so let me give you an example Mr. Carmichael.

If you are tested positive for COVID and if you let a contact tracer know. Because they’ll knock on your door or they’ll call you. And they’ll potentially send you a letter and they’ll ask who have you been around in the last 14 days. And if you say, well Jack Windsor and I had lunch and we sat within five feet of each other and we were there for 45 minutes.

Well, they’ll assume that that’s close contact. So one of two things could happen. I’ll definitely get a phone call and I’ll get a letter indicating that I should quarantine because I was in close contact with someone who has a lab positive COVID result. And then of course the state will count. My understanding is they count it as a probable cause.

But if it’s backed up with other diagnostic information that would lead them to believe that I also have the virus then it would count as a case. So there is a lot that concerns people. Number one, if I get a letter because I was in close contact with you it contains references to the Ohio revised code and how if I don’t comply with the request to quarantine that I will be violating the statute or the law and that there will be repercussions.

Leahy: Jack I want to follow up on the lead story today at The Ohio Star at theohiostar.com. But we also featured it in the Battleground State section in The Tennessee Star. Let me read these two paragraphs and get your reaction.

“A record request was made to the Ohio Department of Health on April 26th of this year regarding the state’s agreement with Partners in Health.

On May 21st, you the reporter from WMFD TV and now The Ohio Star asked Governor DeWine about the relationship with Partners in Health particularly if it made sense given the organization’s penchant for altering the fundamentals of capitalism citing it as a source of structural violence resulting in many societal ills.”

Tell us about that.

Windsor: If you go to the Partners in Health website they’ve revamped it a little bit. I asked the question on May 21. And that is also in the article and a Twitter video that John Cardillo put out that you can click on and listen to and watch. But this organization believes that the capitalistic structure of America is a structure of violence.

It’s a structure that produces homophobia. That produces sexism. That produces racism. That produces greed. That produces essentially all of the fundamental problems that society would have. This organization looks at capitalism as the root problem. And they have this social agenda to fix that.

And so at the core, this is an organization that fundamentally disbelieves in the goodness or the power or the righteousness of capitalism and free choice and free markets. And so their social agenda is to change that. And they just happen to be in the business of contact tracing.

Leahy: And this is Partners in Health. This is the group that Governor DeWine has signed a contract with. He’s supposedly a Republican but he sounds like a Democrat to me. Some of the donors to Partners in Health include George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Why is Governor DeWine refusing to release this information to you?

Windsor: I do not know. We are going to find out. I did get information this morning that would lead me to believe that there is a contract that is signed and that there is no monetary exchange in that relationship. But you and I both know there is no such thing as a free lunch right? So there is a reason that Partners in Health is coming here.

So what’s the value exchange coming from Ohio to them? Is it data and information on all of our medical histories? Is it that they are building a database of our blood or health profiles? I don’t know. I need to dive into it to make sure that one, that document is authentic. And two if it is authentic what is the gift. The governor has walked this path since he was installed as governor in the state of Ohio. He ran as a conservative Republican.

One of the first things he did is he was appointed to the directorship of the Ohio Department of Health a notorious abortion doctor. Whether you think abortion is right or wrong, that’s not the issue. The issue is that when you run as a conservative Republican and someone who is against abortion and then you appoint a director to the Department of Health who is a notorious abortionist, that raises a red flag.

Leahy: This is the recently departed and not lamented Amy Acton who The Ohio Star and your reporting when you were with WMFD in Ohio reporting on the contrast between what she said and what reality was helped I think to bring her down.

Windsor: Absolutely. She came out from day one with a really scary looking chart indicating that we would see 62,000 new cases at the high point of this. And if you run the projections I think that the expectation is that 35,000 to 80 or 85,000 Ohioans are going to die from this virus because it was pushed as highly contagious and 20 times more deadly than influenza. It may have been and certainly may be extremely contagious. Though the contagion factor on it has certainly gone below where it used to be. Yes, she missed the mark from the beginning and never regained her footing.

Leahy: I’m looking at the number of deaths in Ohio to date and it’s 3,996 according to our data at The Ohio Star. A little bit off of that projection that was based on really nothing that we were able to find out about that. Let me ask you this. So DeWine seems to be a Democrat-Republican. First, are they going to try to keep you out of these press conferences, Jack?

Windsor: No. There’s been a lot of tension with other members of the press corps. I’ve requested a one on one with the governor but he has declined. And at times I’ve gone through these stretches where we are supposed to draw numbers out of a hat in order to determine what question we offer that day. It was pretty uncanny.

For several days I was number 17, 18, 0r 19. Now yesterday I was number two so there was a break-in that luck streak right there. There has been a ton of tension and there seems like there’s been some work required by my part. As of right now, I’m still invited and I will still show up.

Listen to the full third hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Mike DeWine Speaking” by Mike DeWine.