An advocacy group is speaking out against the Louisiana Department of Health over its ending of mass vaccination clinics and its directive that staffers not promote seasonal vaccines.
“Public health officials should be working to increase access to life-saving vaccines and not stepping away from their responsibility,” says Dr. Jennifer Herricks with the group Louisiana Families for Vaccines.
Dr. Herricks says the department is taking a dangerous approach.
“Instead of ensuring that Louisiana citizens have accurate science-based information, they are undermining vaccine confidence with statements that misrepresent basic facts,” says Herricks.
In a letter posted onto the department’s website, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham and Deputy Surgeon General Wyche Coleman took aim at the rollout of COVID vaccines, saying that they were mandated despite having no third-party benefit in terms of reduced transmission.
Dr. Herricks says Abraham and Coleman are misleading people with that claim.
“They claim that COVID vaccines don’t prevent transmission, when in fact that there are mountains of data that show that they significantly reduce the risk of transmission,” Herricks says.
According to Abraham’s and Coleman’s letter, “promotion of specific pharmaceutical products rises to a different level, especially when the manufacturer is exempt from liability for harms caused by the drug, as is the case for many vaccines.”
Herricks says manufacturers are not exempt from liability.
“They distort the truth by stating that vaccines are liability-free,” Herricks says. “The reality is that there’s a federal program that ensures swift and fair compensations for rare vaccine injuries and also allows claimants to reject these settlements and sue manufacturers in civil court.”
Herricks also takes exception to Abraham’s and Coleman’s assertion that vaccines may benefit some and cause harm to others.
“Vaccines very, very rarely cause any adverse events,” says Herricks, “but the infectous diseases that they prevent cause far more frequent and severe long-term harm.”