Louisiana to End Mass Vaccine Promotion, Surgeon General Announces

A 13-year-old receives a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from a registered nurse at the UHealth's pediatric mobile clinic in Miami, Fla., on May 17, 2021. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Louisiana Department of Health said it will no longer promote mass vaccination, according to a memo released by the state’s surgeon general this week.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health (LDH) confirmed that Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham had ordered his staff to stop engaging in media campaigns and community health fairs to encourage vaccinations and shared the memo with The Epoch Times on Friday.

“The State of Louisiana and LDH have historically promoted vaccines for vaccine preventable illnesses through our parish health units, community health fairs, partnerships and media campaigns,” the memo said. “While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider, LDH will no longer promote mass vaccination.”

Louisiana state officials will still provide and stock vaccines, according to the memo, which stressed that healthcare providers talk about the benefits and risks posed by vaccines with patients and answer all questions based on scientific evidence.

In a separate letter posted on the state health department’s website on Feb. 13, Abraham was critical of blanket government mandates for vaccines and said that federal officials were erroneous in how they pushed for COVID-19 vaccines. He said individuals should make their own decisions instead.

His letter chided what he called “inaccurate and inconsistent guidance on masking, poor decisions to close schools, unjustifiable mandates on civil liberties, and false claims regarding natural immunity.”

“But the greatest missteps were on vaccines and some continue to this day,” the Republican surgeon general wrote. “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.”

Describing that as an “offense against personal autonomy that will take years to overcome,” he was then critical of current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines that recommend 6-month-old children get vaccines for COVID-19.

“Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine,” Abraham said, noting that he wants to regain the “public trust” by “acknowledging past missteps, refocusing on unbiased data collection, and providing transparent, balanced information for people to make their own health decisions.”

In Democrat-controlled New Orleans, the city council passed a resolution on Thursday vowing to continue supporting vaccination efforts.

The city’s health department director, Jennifer Avegno, said state-supported efforts have led thousands of people to receive vaccines in the past. However, she anticipates vaccination rates for preventable diseases will drop due to the state’s new policy and asserted that vaccines are most effective when they are widespread.

“‘[The Louisiana Department of Health] will no longer promote mass vaccination.’ Now, I don’t know what that means. Every year I’ve been here, and before me, the New Orleans Health Department and the state Health Department has worked together on really successful mass vaccination events,” Avegno told local TV station Fox8.

Avegno also said that it’s not clear what vaccinations the state health department will not promote.

Both the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have said that COVID-19 vaccines’ benefits outweigh their risks. As recently as mid-January, the CDC released a study that asserted that 2023–2024 booster shots had “reduced the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization among older adults” by around 50 percent and that children who got the vaccines saw a reduction in COVID-19-associated emergency room and urgent care visits.

However, over the past several years, a number of studies have cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness and questioned whether they can lead to more long-term health issues. The FDA and CDC say that mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna are associated with a higher risk of developing myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the outer sac that lines the heart.

This week, the U.S. Senate confirmed former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both the FDA and CDC. Kennedy has long been critical of certain vaccines, including ones for COVID-19 and childhood illnesses.

Kennedy said during the Senate confirmation hearing that he is not anti-vaccine but only wants vaccines to be rigorously tested as well as more transparency for federal health agencies.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.