Nurses working the front lines of the COVID pandemic tell state lawmakers they feel negative effects from vaccines are badly underestimated. State health officials testified of only 11 “severe adverse events” statewide, but then left the committee room before Lafayette ICU nurse Heather LeBeouf could testify her disagreement with the number, “I could come up with 11 people admitted to my hospital right now, that I would report as having possible effects.”
There is a statewide LDH call-in system to report adverse COVID shot reactions, but LeBeouf says she and many of her colleagues were unaware it even existed. She says a great many cases of problems with the vaccines are going un-reported, because this isn’t generally known among medical professionals. “I’ve asked my management this. I’ve asked physicians, nurse practitioners … and asked every nurse in the ICU yesterday … ‘who do you think is supposed to report these things?’ and they said ‘I don’t know. I guess the patient? or the doctor?'”
Another Lafayette ICU nurse, Elizabeth Suire, also testified that she and colleagues had no knowledge of a number to report COVID vaccine troubles to LDH. She says she asked repeatedly about this. “I’ve approached physicians about it, and it’s always brushed aside. It’s never addressed. It’s not reported. It’s not mentioned in patient notes”
Both nurses told lawmakers the reporting hotline’s obscurity is almost certainly leading to under-reporting of ill effects from the vaccines. Neither State Health Officer Joe Kanter nor State Epidemiologist Theresa Sokol were in the committee room to hear the testimony.
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