HJBR Nov/Dec 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  NOV / DEC 2024 29 THE ANTIPHONY of a kid that has a serious condition, you’re in agony, you’re searching for answers, and if someone gives you an answer, there’s a degree of comfort in there. You have an answer, but it’s not true. To make a wild claim like that is so damaging. It’s so purely self-serving. It’s taking advantage of fami- lies at their absolute most vulnerable time when they’re really hurting and searching for an answer. Why is my kid different?Why is this happening? It’s snake oil salesmen at its finest. To do that in a setting like that is so antithetical to what physicians and public health practitioners should do. Editor What do you think physicians and public health practitioners should do with this information that’s coming from the lead doctor, basically, in Louisiana now? Physician I think physicians will continue to do what they’ve always done, which is treat the patient in front of them, use the available evidence to the best of their abil- ity, do their research, keep up to date with medical knowledge and studies. You take the corollary of what’s happening in Flor- ida where you have a very similar tact by a very politically ambitious surgeon general in that state. Doctors there are not treating their patients any differently, I don’t believe, but I think a lot of families and patients fall victim to this type of misinformation, and it makes the job that much harder. In some ways, in public health, we’re a victim of our own success. No one remem- bers what it’s like to treat a polio patient. Very few people remember what it’s like to try and contain a measles outbreak. There are countless ways that public health helps people live healthy lives that nobody knows about. This is Louisiana. You can go eat raw oysters and be relatively assured that there’s a vast and robust safety network that’s backing the oyster industry to make sure that you don’t get vibrio, which is a poten- tially serious, if not deadly, disease to some. Public health has gotten so good at that, and by the nature, a lot of this work is done in the shadows and confidentially that I think people don’t realize how important it is. But it would be a travesty in this country if we have a kid die of polio — an absolute and absolute travesty — but that is where this leads. Systematically erode confidence. Use family’s pain for your personal gain to pos- ture yourself politically — that’s where this leads. It leads to families falling victim, by no fault of their own, to these types of lies. Vaccination rates go down — I’m not even talking about COVID, I’m talking about measles and polio — and we have a com- pletely avoidable death from a virus that should never happen in the richest coun- try in the world. That’s what I fear, and the pathway to that is already being laid out. It’s really depressing, and to see someone try and capitalize on that is just disheartening. Editor I just got off the phone with state Sen. Gallé, who lead the COVID response committee hearing. He is flat out saying there was a cure for COVID, that the new state surgeon general and others had a cure and were using it effectively — iver- mectin, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, zithromax, paxlovid, and budesonide, apparently the “silver bullet” for COVID- 19. the cures were not promoted and treatments not given because EUA for the COVID vaccine could not be imple- mented if there was a treatment. It that true? Could EUA be given for COVID vaccines if an effective treatment(s) for COVID were available? He is claiming that is why FDA was saying treatments did not work, and this was a ruse by the pharmaceutical companies to get shots into every arm in the U.S. with no recourse on vaccine injury. Does what he says have merit? Either way, please elaborate. Physician He is flat out wrong, and it was disappointing LDH did not take the oppor- tunity to set the record straight. In general, an EUA is not considered if there is, in exis- tence, an already known, effective agent accomplishing the same thing. But vaccines (to prevent disease) and therapeutics (to treat disease once you have it) are very dif- ferent. For example: pertussis vaccine pre- vents whooping cough. Antibiotics treat it if you do get it. Even if budesonide worked to keep people out of the hospital (it did not), there would still very much be the need for a vaccine, and there would still very much be an indication for an EUA. On budesonide, this is one of many medicines there was initially some hope for, but, unfortunately, evidence didn’t pan out. Studies showed it potentially decreased length of subjective symptoms by a day or so but unfortunately did not reduce rate of hospitalization or death. On the question of why the authori- ties didn’t endorse any cheap, generic drugs, the “authorities” certainly did when they proved to be effective. For example, IV ste- roids like Decadron and Prednisone were proven to improve outcomes of hospitalized patients and were an important component of inpatient treatment recommendations — both very old, generic, cheap. Editor State Sen. Gallé, who lead the ses- sion, believes that Abraham had a cure. It sounds like Abraham thinks he had a cure: ivermectin and steroids. Did he? What I don’t understand is the mindset, “I don’t trust the FDA; I don’t trust CDC; Fauci is a liar — lied repeatedly to the American people even in front of con- gress about bioweapons; the only person I trust is Ralph Abraham and a few oth- ers who are antivax; and even the cre- ator of mRNA shots says he regrets they were used for COVID.” I just threw a lot of questions at you, but this seems to be the narrative. Do you have thoughts on each? Also, can we trust CDC, the FDA? He says there are flawed individu- als and just because someone has been