The Louisiana Department of Health is ending its long-standing practice of holding mass vaccination clinics, and department staff can no longer promote seasonal vaccines.
“We want to pivot and focus back on some of those basics of health care and, in general, stay out of the business of making specific recommendations to patients and try to restore some of that decision-making back to the doctor and patient relationship,” says Dr. Wyche Coleman, Louisiana deputy surgeon general.
In a letter posted to the department’s website, Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham and Dr. Coleman also take aim at the CDC’s response to the COVID pandemic.
“(T)he greatest missteps were on vaccines and some continue to this day,” the letter posted on the department’s website reads in part. “Within months of their approval, COVID vaccines were shown to have no third-party benefit in terms of reduced transmission, yet they were still mandated — through both policy and social pressure. That was an offense against personal autonomy that will take years to overcome. Even now, the CDC recommends that 6-month-olds receive COVID vaccinations — woefully out of touch with reality and with most parents, who have less faith than ever in the merit of the CDC’s recommendations.”
Coleman says the purpose of the directive is for the department to, in his words, get back to the basics.
“There’s a lot of influence from outside sources — I call them third-party interests — that try to push patients in different directions,” says Coleman. “They come in asking about specific medicines and specific treatment. And the people pushing those don’t always have their best interests in mind.”
Coleman says the department wants to return vaccine decision making to the patients and their doctors.
“The one-size-fits-all approach that public health has taken over the past couple of decades is probably not beneficial to the population as a whole and certainly sort of disregards the individual,” Coleman says.
Coleman’s and Abraham’s letter says the focus on vaccines has also led health departments to neglect other issues.
“Every business owner knows that to promote one thing, you must choose not to promote something else. We saw many examples of this over the past four years, in which people missed routine screenings and cancers went undiagnosed,” the letter reads. “Treatment for substance abuse was put on the back burner as deaths from opioid overdoses skyrocketed. Mental health disorders were left unattended, spilling over into crises of homelessness and crime. In Louisiana, maternal and infant mortality remain near the worst in the nation. All the while, chronic disease rates continue creeping up to crisis levels. These are the post-pandemic priorities of the Louisiana Department of Health.”
Coleman says the messaging in recent years has been counterproductive, and the department’s directive aims to change that.
“It’s just mainly the mass marketing campaign that says every single person needs to do this one thing, that we’re trying to pivot away from so that we can leave those decisions back to a more individualized basis, the way it occurs in a real medical practice,” says Coleman.
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