HJBR Nov/Dec 2024

A PHYSICIAN’S RESPONSE 30 NOV / DEC 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE studying and devoted their life to some- thing doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t mislead the public for profit. Apparently, the American way — the almighty dol- lar — is greater than the common good. (The last sentence is mine.) Physician Ivermectin was, unfortunately, found not to be a cure. Why these people think Abraham had a secret cure, and he had that cure way back in December 2019 or January 2020, I have no idea. Sometimes our state legislators leave a lot to be desired. But for a guy like Abraham, he knows bet- ter and should be acting like it. The “cre- ator of the mRNA” shot is Robert Malone, a disgruntled former researcher. He was involved in some of the early work that led to mRNA technology but most certainly was not the “creator of the shot.” He has found new life as a professional antivax figure and accompanied RFK Jr. on his visit to testify at the Louisiana legislature a few years ago. Why the hatred of FDA, CDC, NIH? Who knows. Guys like RFKmake a living on con- spiracy theories. Why guys like Ralph have [been] bought on, I don’t know. It is readily evident they don’t really knowwhat they’re talking about and can’t be bothered by tak- ing the time to learn, as evidenced by the absurd and erroneous belief that the only way FDA could approve an EUA for a vac- cine is if budesonide didn’t work as a treat- ment. There are many other examples. Do these big federal agencies make mistakes? Of course. But are they all complicit in some massive conspiracy to poison America via mRNA? Only if you refuse to take off the tin foil hat. One example to that last point, Johnson & Johnson also made a COVID vaccine. Early in its use, it was discovered, through CDC and FDAmonitoring programs like VAERS and others, that in a very small percentage of recipients, it caused danger- ous blood clots. This was brought to light immediately by the FDAand CDC, and it was removed from market. The system worked as intended — no hiding of data, no doing the bidding of pharma companies. Editor Vaccination rates in Louisiana have always been low. What do you attribute that to? Physician It’s actually more nuanced than that. We’ve been low for flu vaccine, but for measles and polio and other routine child- hood vaccines, we’ve actually exceeded national average for a long time, and we’ve done that in Louisiana despite having the most robust vaccine exemption laws. It has been the case in Louisiana that you can exempt your child from the school vaccine schedule for medical reasons, for religious reasons, or for personal reasons; and you don’t need a doctor’s note, you don’t need a notary, you just indicate as much. This pre- dates all the bills that were passed in the past couple of years. This has been the case for years in Loui- siana. Despite that, our vaccine rates for key vaccines like measles and polio have exceeded the national average for many years. And I think the reason is because unlike some other parts of the country, we didn’t politicize this stuff. We didn’t politi- cize vaccines, and we didn’t politicize public health. That is all being washed away right now, unfortunately. Editor T here was a discussion about the vaccine mandate for nurses. I think most doctors took the vaccine with no issue, but a lot of nurses in particular were very upset that they were mandated by their employers to take the vaccine. Do you have thoughts on their plight? One thing was brought up in that testimony that there was a 20-page document that a nurse had to fill out to get an exemp- tion. If she was doing it on a religious basis, she had to have a note from her pastor saying why it was a religious rea- son and show documentation she was on the congregation rolls for so many years at that church. They’re saying that that was a personal rights issue, that these nurses and these citizens should have had a right to continue working and to not be forced to put an unproven vaccine into their bodies. Physician Yeah, I heard that particular com- ment. If there was some hospital that was requiring such an onerous exemption, that was a policy of that hospital, not the direc- tive from the federal government. The direc- tive of the federal government, as I remem- ber it, is that hospitals had to have a policy in place by which they communicated the CMS requirement, and then they had a pol- icy for reasonable exemptions. CMS didn’t require that to be overly onerous as appar- ently one hospital interpreted it. I’ve got a few thoughts on this. First off, there was never any vaccine mandate done by the state of Louisiana. There were some by the federal government through CMS and then by OSHA, too, and they eventually either got withdrawn or overturned or so forth, but there was never any vaccine mandate done by the state. It’s a challenging thing to talk about. It was almost like wartime. When those requirements were put in, the data at the time showed that the vaccine was effective not only in reducing severe disease and reducing hospitalization and mortality, but also, in reducing transmission. We certainly know, as the pandemic progressed and as this virus mutated so quickly, the vaccine became much less effective at reducing transmission but retained effectiveness at preventing or reducing the likelihood of severe disease. In the context of the vac- cine being effective at reducing transmis- sion and in the context of hospitals being on the verge of being overrun and the nation exerting considerable resources to try and keep the ship afloat, I think that is the world in which those vaccine mandates were derived. And I think it’s a very valid argument. To go back now and talk about the pros and cons of that, that’s ripe for a