Covid Commission: Who Can You Trust?
Follow the money and read the science.
In the first of several planned hearings, the Louisiana House Select Committee on Homeland Security met in September to evaluate the state’s response to the covid pandemic. After four years of the Edwards administration running roughshod over constitutional protections and long-standing public health policies, these hearings provided much-needed oversight. It is important to point out that these hearings only became possible with a change in administration and legislature. The lack of accountability during the declared emergency is one issue that the legislature still must address. While the two-day hearing in September focused on the actions of the Louisiana Department of Health under John Bel Edwards and covid policies adopted by hospitals, more hearings are planned to discuss policies forced upon schools and students, business closures, and Edwards’ executive orders.
Health Freedom Louisiana has long contended that LDH’s policies under Edwards violated long-standing public health strategies, wreaked havoc on Louisiana citizens, damaged the economy, and disrupted the already tenuous Louisiana job market. Contact tracing months after the initial infection, repeated covid testing, quarantining (and testing) healthy people, social distancing, masking, and denying natural immunity were all strategies counter to established public health approaches and only managed to amplify the pandemic artificially and propagate fear. None of these policies are benign. For a while, hospitals were closed to all but covid-related cases, leaving millions of Louisianans without necessary medical care, and serious conditions, like cancer and heart disease, went unnoticed and untreated.
Of course, covid masking and vaccine promotion by LDH defy all reason and science. The illegal and unethical promotion of these untested and experimental medical interventions by a state agency should warn future generations of the danger of unchecked central powers.
As we highlighted in previous articles, testimony throughout the two-day hearing provided insight into the dark reality of covid policies, including comments from current Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham who stated he believes mortality increased as a result of these policies, more so than from covid. Watch below.
Dr. Abraham’s testimony was a summary of harms experienced as a result of covid policies. Masking, social distancing, vaccine mandates, and interference with the doctor-patient relationship all had integral roles in damaging not only the public psyche, as trust in doctors has taken a dramatic nose dive, but they very likely caused more harm than had nothing been done. (Additional studies are linked at the end.)
In a previous article, we noted that Dr. Abraham treated thousands of covid patients successfully with alternative treatments. This experience alone provides enormous weight to his testimony but he also has an impressive CV. We may not agree with Dr. Abraham on all things, but there is no doubt his experience and expertise in the medical field runs circles around the previous secretary of health, Courtney Phillips, who has a Ph.D. in Public Policy. In contrast, Dr. Abraham actually treated covid patients. He holds two, yes, two medical degrees. In addition to being a medical doctor, he is a doctor of veterinary medicine. According to his official bio, besides serving three terms in Congress, “Dr. Abraham was a First Lieutenant in the Army National Guard. He has served on missions for the Free Burma Rangers in Burma, Syria, Iraq and Ukraine. He has also volunteered on humanitarian missions in Afghanistan, Haiti, Africa and the Amazon rainforest.
Additionally, he is a fixed-wing and helicopter pilot who currently flies missions for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, and the Air Force’s Civil Air Patrol Green Flag Program. He’s a certified flight instructor, a graduate of the Army Flight Surgeon School at Fort Novosel in Alabama, and actively works with Pilots for Patients – an organization that provides free air transportation to patients needing medical treatment not available to them locally. He’s flown with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Hunters during reconnaissance missions through Hurricanes Harvey and Michael. He has also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.”
Dr. Abraham’s experience and knowledge is vast, and that is beyond contestation.
Grassroots or Pharma Shills? Follow the Money.
Louisiana’s left-leaning media outlets, who have been fully complicit in the covid fear campaign and have overtly marginalized disfavored voices like ours over the last several years, had a difficult time processing the information presented during the two-day hearing. For example, Piper Hutchinson’s article, Vaccine legislation is a loser in Louisiana, but misinformation wins anyway: analysis, attempts to minimize the significance of Louisiana’s hugely successful legislative session — by far the best in the country, passing an unprecedented 11 health freedom-related pieces of legislation — yet fails to rebut any facts presented during the hearing. Instead, Hutchinson uses the word “misinformation” repeatedly — nine times — to discredit the information presented during the September hearing and refers to presenters as “fringe.” This is a typical tactic used by the left to try to smear opponents - hurl insults and accusations but never mention or address any of the facts.
The journalists who cover the state Capitol no longer have accomplices at LDH, so while there was a general reference to “experts” in Hutchinson’s article, it only included one quote from local rabid pro-vaxxer, Jennifer Herricks, whom they described as “a public health communicator with a Ph.D. in microbiology, [who] works with the Louisiana Families for Vaccines to combat misinformation.” We have written about Herricks and her association with vaccine zealots Dorit Reiss, Ph.D. and Dr. Peter Hotez in a previous article, but here she is, in the video below, gasping for air in a mask while stating support for medical-only school vaccine exemptions during a House Education hearing in 2022. Readers must know that she, her organization, and her associates like Reiss and Hotez, all support the removal of parental rights and informed consent by eliminating the ability to be exempt from vaccinations.
These people have an unhealthy obsession with vaccinating your children.
Herricks’ organization claims to be “grassroots,” but her local corporate partner network is anything but. These partner organizations profit directly from vaccines or promote vaccination which then benefits the vaccine industry.
They include: The Louisiana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Louisiana Vaccine Alliance whose leadership includes CDC Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices (ACIP) member Dr. Joseph Bocchini, Jr., Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, Louisiana Public Health Institute, Access Health Louisiana, Louisiana School Based Health Alliance, Priority Health Care, and the Louisiana Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).
State Representative Jessica Domangue is a licensed clinical social worker — is she a member of NASW? Remember, her amendment to HB47 this year would have required that all students submitting a vaccine exemption undergo a physical exam by a doctor, thereby eliminating our current exemption and turning it into only a medical one. (Thankfully that amendment was killed.) What a coincidence.
Take a look at Herricks’ “National Partners” in the image below, taken directly from her organization’s site. This is where it gets interesting.
Vaccinate Your Family is an initiative to promote vaccination which directly benefits the vaccine industry. Its corporate sponsors include CDC, Dynavax, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corporation, Moderna, vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, Seqirus.
#WethePeopleVax is an initiative to promote vaccination which directly benefits the vaccine industry.
Health Hero’s goal is to vaccinate children in school regardless of insurance coverage, which directly benefits the vaccine industry.
St. Jude HPV Cancer Prevention Program promotes HPV vaccination which directly benefits the vaccine industry. (Read more about HPV vaccines here and here.)
Infectious Disease Prevention Network’s goal is to strengthen pro-vaccine policy which directly benefits the vaccine industry. The website did not list corporate sponsors but the organization did have $1.95 million in revenue in 2022.
National Foundation for Infectious Diseases had $3.58 million in revenue in 2023 and corporate sponsors include Astra Zeneca, Bavarian Nordic, Moderna, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co, Inc., Sanofi US, Seqirus USA Inc.
One of Herricks’ national partners is SAFE Communities Coalition, and as noted on the picture with the green arrow, they also fund her website. Furthermore, she serves as their Advocacy Director. See below.
Let’s take a closer look at SAFE Communities Coalition and their corporate sponsorship found in the image below.
There are several of the same players who partner directly with Herricks’ Louisiana organization. But note those circled in red. We’ll cover them later. First, let’s discuss a few of the others:
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is one of nine healthcare-related organizations which in conjunction with ACIP determines which vaccines go on the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. AAP receives sponsorship from Sanofi and Regeneron and had revenue of $129 million in 2023.
Immunize.org has “partnered with Pfizer, Inc. to create our ‘Take a Stand’ project aimed at improving adult immunization coverage rates by increasing the use of standing orders protocols in medical practices throughout the nation.” Immunize.org had revenue of $4.57 million in 2023.
March of Dimes (Healthy Moms, Strong Babies) boasts Merck, Sanofi, CVS Health, HCA Healthcare, Elevance Health, Humana, and Blue Cross Blue Shield as corporate sponsors. March of Dimes had revenue of $105 million in 2022.
Now let’s look at the ones circled in red. Five of the six are vaccine manufacturers themselves that partner directly with SAFE Communities Coalition: Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, CSL Seqirus, and Moderna.
We saved the best for last. . .
Voices for Vaccines claims to be “credible vaccine information for families, from families.” And when they say credible vaccine information “from families” they mean crazy cousin Dorit Reiss, who is on staff as a volunteer legal strategist. Other “family members” include rich uncle and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit and the Godfather of Vaccines, Dr. Stanley Plotkin. That’s not your average “family.” Voices for Vaccines is owned by The Task Force for Global Health which had a revenue of $95.1 million in 2023 but manages $691 million worth of medicines. The partner list for Task Force for Global Health reads like a cast of globalist players:
Interestingly, many of the organizations listed above are also listed as “Partner Websites” by the CDC, including Voices for Vaccines, Vaccinate Your Family, American Academy of Pediatrics, Families Fighting Flu, and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
After looking at the list of partners for Herricks’ organization and the SAFE Communities Coalition, the organization she serves as Advocacy Director and which funds her site, do you think “grassroots” is the appropriate term for Louisiana Families for Vaccines? Or are they just shills for vaccine manufacturers?
Any journalist that cites Herricks’ opinion might as well cite a vaccine lobbyist — they serve the same master. In contrast, Health Freedom Louisiana’s advocacy benefits no industry, instead it benefits the public, as we work to protect your right to voluntary informed consent.
Many thanks to the members of the Select Committee on Homeland Security for the time and resources necessary for these hearings. Also, the members should be applauded for withstanding the abuse heaped on by these so-called “journalists” who repeatedly and moronically seek approval from the same industry that caused so much demonstrable harm during covid.
Show Me the Studies . . .
Below are just a few studies validating comments spoken during the hearing:
Masking
In 2020, HFL made it a point to address the issue of safety of long-term mask use. Public health officials focused solely on efficacy while ignoring the critical issue of harm associated with this medical intervention. We knew then and we know now that there was no comprehensive study indicating the safety of this medical intervention. The first study listed below speaks to that concern.
Undoubtedly, mask mandates during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have been generating an additional source of potentially harmful exposition to toxins with health threatening and carcinogenic properties at population level with almost zero distance to the airways.”
Child mask mandates for COVID-19: a systematic review “Conclusions Real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence. The current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID-19.”
There is a lack of robust evidence of benefit from masking children to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 or other respiratory viruses. In this review, we have, however, identified multiple studies, both randomized and observational, which report that masking may lead to a variety harms in children of all ages. Recommendations for masking children, therefore, fail even the most basic harm-benefit analyses.”
Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses “The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.”
School Mask Mandates and COVID-19: The Challenge of Using Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Observational Data to Estimate the Effectiveness of a Public Health Intervention Re-analysis of a study used to support masking in children: “Alternate analyses yielded estimates consistent with a wide range of both negative and positive associations in COVID-19 case rates after removal of mask mandates. The findings highlight the challenges of using DiD analysis of ecological data to estimate the effectiveness of interventions in divergent intervention and control groups during rapidly changing circumstances.”
Social Distancing
Social distancing was never evidenced-based, rather modeled, as we stated in this document to BESE in 2020. In a congressional hearing in Janury of this year, Anthony Fauci disclosed that social distancing guidelines “sort of just appeared.”
Covid Vaccines
Journalist Alex Berenson evaluated recently released study data indicating significant harm to children following covid vaccination, in an article entitled Children who received mRNA Covid shots died SIX TIMES as often as unjabbed kids in a very large database.
Association of SARS-CoV-2 immunoserology and vaccination status with myocardial infarction severity and outcome “Conclusions: The combination of vaccination and natural SARS-CoV2 infection was associated with the development of severe heart failure and cardiogenic shock in patients with STEMI, possibly related to an increased serological response.” This study is significant because Louisiana has a high rate of heart disease.
COVID-19 vaccination decisions and impacts of vaccine mandates: a cross sectional survey of healthcare workers in Ontario, Canada “Conclusions: Mandated vaccination policies in Ontario have negatively affected HCWs’ well-being, patient care, and the health system’s sustainability. This study suggests the need for similar research in other regions and highlights and underscores the need for not only evidence-informed, but also ethics-informed, policies, especially during health emergencies.”
Inability to work following COVID-19 vaccination-a relevant aspect for future booster vaccinations “Results: Among 1704 HCWs enrolled, 595 (34.9%) HCWs were on sick leave following at least one COVID-19 vaccination, leading to a total number of 1550 sick days. Both the absolute sick days and the rate of HCWs on sick leave significantly increased with each subsequent vaccination.”
Natural Immunity
The headline from a May 2024 Nature article tells the tale: Scientists tried to give people COVID — and failed. This study indicates the effectiveness of natural immunity - what every vaccine attempts to emulate. But it also begs the question: if scientists are not capable of intentionally infecting study participants with ancestral strains of SARS-CoV-2, how will a vaccine ever be produced in time to combat current circulating strains of a virus?
We leave you with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s X post summarizing a Congressional report on propaganda during covid. (Click on photo.)
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