It's Been Five Years Since "Two Weeks to Slow the Spread." Are Louisianans Protected from Future Overreach?
Short answer: no.
Five years after John Bel Edwards shut down Louisiana — closed businesses and schools — for “two weeks to slow the spread,” we still can’t believe what Americans endured or tolerated. America’s general ignorance of health and the immune system — heavily influenced by a reliance on allopathic medicine, pharma’s advertising power, and Hollywood’s dramatization of contagions — benefited unscrupulous actors like Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Bill Gates, and whoever was running the country as the President’s mental health declined.
Louisiana’s general ill health, a concern we raised in March 2020, was never addressed, even though co-morbidities played a significant role in covid deaths. No one was interested in ‘making Louisiana healthy again’ back then. Instead, John Bel Edwards' appeal to “Be a good neighbor” served as a psychological 'nudge,' aimed at modifying our behavior by moralizing actions like staying home, social distancing, masking, and vaccination.
The actions of scientists and government officials—who obfuscated the origins of SARS-CoV-2, censored information about effective treatments, and misrepresented the benefits of a harmful 'vaccine,' which we identified early on as a gene therapy—further compounded the crisis. Dissenting voices like ours were silenced, marginalized, and ultimately demonized to shield the nefarious actions of those who betrayed the public trust. As a result, millions of people died, our country experienced a coup, the world witnessed the largest transfer of wealth, a puppet was installed in the White House, and we watched helplessly as the United States came very close to starting World War III.
Make no mistake, covid is not to blame.
Instead, fear, ignorance, and a general lack of moral courage nearly brought our great country to its knees — all in the name of public health, aka the greater good.
The countless lives lost due to the lies our government told may never be fully quantified, but the reality of the covid atrocities must be confronted. We endured an attack on civil liberties and human rights that demands careful evaluation with the proper perspective: none of this should have happened. Long-standing public health policy advised against most, if not all, of the radical, illogical, and unethical restrictions imposed by our state and federal governments during covid, but just as importantly, our state’s constitution and laws prevent such overreach, as we discuss below.
Five years later, has the Louisiana Legislature taken action to address the civil liberty and human rights violations Louisianans experienced during the COVID era under Edwards and Biden?
Some concerns have been addressed. Churches will no longer be closed by government edict, schools must inform parents of the law that provides a “dissent” from any vaccine requirements to attend school, and no school is allowed to require covid vaccinations. Additionally, the emergency powers chapter of the law was clarified to specify that a petition signed by a majority of the surviving members of one chamber is sufficient to end a declared public health emergency, either in whole or in part.
What about business closures and medical mandates? Can they happen again if Disease X arrives at our door?
Unfortunately, yes.
The Louisiana Legislature has not addressed the issue of the unconstitutional edicts to close businesses nor the unethical and inhumane medical mandates - whether issued by federal, state, or private companies - to mask and vaccinate. Nor has the legislature addressed the egregious promotion and marketing of masks and vaccines by the Louisiana Department of Health. We will never forget Edwards' vaccine lottery or 'Shots for Santa'—schemes that targeted citizens already financially burdened by business closures and plagued by an unrelenting, unethical propaganda campaign designed to increase vaccine uptake.
State Representative Chuck Owen carried a resolution last year that compelled the House Select Committee on Homeland Security to review the state’s response to the covid emergency, which resulted in a 2-day hearing on September 25th and 26th of last year.
On September 26, 2024, Health Freedom Louisiana Co-Director Jill Hines had the opportunity to testify before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, as the hearing concluded. Watch part of her testimony below.
Jill’s full statement can be read below:
Art. I Section 1 of Louisiana’s constitution reads:
“All government, of right, originates with the people, is founded on their will alone, and is instituted to protect the rights of the individual and for the good of the whole. Its only legitimate ends are to secure justice for all, preserve peace, protect the rights, and promote the happiness and general welfare of the people. The rights enumerated in this Article are inalienable by the state and shall be preserved inviolate by the state.”
In addition, RS 29:736(D), the section on Emergency Powers, reads in part:
D. Nothing in this Chapter shall be interpreted to diminish the rights guaranteed to all persons under the Declaration of Rights of the Louisiana Constitution or the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. This Chapter shall not violate Article II (Distribution of Powers), Article III (Legislative Branch), or Article V (Judicial Branch) of the Louisiana Constitution. The courts shall be open, and every person shall have an adequate remedy by due process of law and justice, administered without denial, partiality, or unreasonable delay, for injury to him in his person, property, reputation, or other rights.
We have mechanisms in place to prevent the human rights disaster that was covid, but they failed at every level, except one - the LA Dept of Justice and the Attorney General’s office. I give kudos to Jeff Landry and Liz Murrill, who did all they could to protect the rights enshrined in our Declaration of Rights against the extreme overreach of the federal government. Many thanks also to the members of the Legislature who fought for their citizens but were thwarted by leadership who repeatedly refused to act.
This is a reminder that the Louisiana Department of Health and the CDC are not elected bodies answerable to the citizens of Louisiana, yet they did more to direct policy in Louisiana in the last four years than any other elected body in the state.
Their recommendations have violated constitutionally protected civil liberties and rights enumerated in the state’s declaration of rights, including due process, the right to individual dignity, freedom from discrimination, the right to humane treatment, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy. In addition, LDH and federal dictates have effectively removed parental rights and interrupted commerce and employment stability.
Before we enact new laws, we need to find out how and why the current laws and constitutional protections were so blatantly ignored without consequence.
I also want to caution you about considering that an ‘exemption’ will solve the problem that mask and vaccine mandates create. The state’s vaccine law for students, which violates the state’s Right to Privacy and has subsequently been used unethically to compel vaccination in exchange for an education, was used to justify immunity passports and vaccine mandates during covid.
We have heard repeatedly today that the doctor-patient relationship is sacred but when we allow businesses to dictate what medical treatments an employee must undergo, the business is not only practicing medicine illegally but violating tenets of informed consent - the most basic of which is the right to refuse medical treatment without fear of coercion or retribution.
Additionally, you should not need an exemption for any medical intervention that is experimental or that has any risk to health, including death.
The legislature puts restrictions on businesses in regard to safe work environments all the time. The state already has a law prohibiting products on the market that do not have product liability. Implementing restrictions on workplace vaccination and EUA drug requirements completely is not unreasonable.
In regard to informed consent, it is not possible to provide fully informed consent with an EUA drug. They are experimental in nature, so what is required is informed assent - under federal law, an acknowledgment of all known benefits and risks must be made known to the patient along with the fact that they have the RIGHT to REFUSE. This was never acknowledged by LDH, and they repeatedly violated federal guidelines that require certain language on EAU products on all promotional material, as well. For example, the EUA for masks requires that any promotional material for masks include information that they do not prevent viral transmission. We filed a formal complaint against LDH with the FDA for their promotional materials for masks and vaccines.
There was also never education from LDH on the injury reporting requirements for healthcare workers for EUA vaccines. Under federal law, healthcare providers are MANDATORY reporters of vaccine injury. Despite the enormous numbers of covid reports in VAERS, vaccine injury is drastically underreported. After the rollout in December 2020, hospitals were not provided with a patient’s vaccine history that is tracked in LINKS. We wrote a letter to LDH addressing healthcare concerns about witnessing a rise in heart attacks and stroke-like symptoms in March 2021 but not being able to find the patient’s vaccine history. Vaccine records appeared on electronic medical records in April 2021. MONTHS of adverse events went unreported, but even then, injury went unreported - healthcare workers were not adequately informed that adverse events - IRRESPECTIVE OF ATTRIBUTION TO VACCINATION - had to be reported by law.
Finally, for years, LDH memorialized the number of covid deaths on social media while at the same time encouraging covid vaccination. They withheld from the public that they knew people were dying of covid despite being covid vaccinated. A public records request I submitted last year indicated that of 12,000 people who died of covid since the vaccine rollout, over 3,000 fully vaccinated people subsequently died of covid. Over 1,200 of those individuals had three or more covid shots and yet still died of covid.
By law, a VAERS report must be filed for those individuals. I requested that the previous administration at LDH do that - file a VAERS report for those 3,000 plus individuals - but it has not been done.
LDH should be THE safeguard against unethical federal mandates but during the most significant public health crisis in our lifetime, they became a marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry.
The legislature has oversight of LDH and should ensure that it remains free from industry capture and does not remain a servant of the pharmaceutical industry or federal health agencies, like the CDC.
How should the legislature respond to actions taken by the state during the pandemic?
As the only organization in Louisiana focused from day one on the covid response from a consumer and human rights perspective, Health Freedom Louisiana offers the following recommendations to the legislature:
Recommendation: Pass legislation to prohibit medical mandates in the public and private sectors altogether, including prohibitions on discrimination for refusing medical interventions. Include civil and criminal penalties for violating informed consent through coercive or deceptive means.
A "No Medical Mandates" law protects informed consent, ensuring that individuals cannot be coerced into receiving a vaccine or any future countermeasure and that discrimination based on vaccine refusal for school or work will not be tolerated. This policy position also ensures that individuals will not be denied access to goods and services, travel, or enrollment in sundry activities like summer camps for refusing an unwanted medical intervention. A “No Medical Mandates” law also ensures that vaccines may not be required as a prerequisite for receiving other medical treatments like chemo or organ transplants. This policy stance in no way prevents people from getting a vaccine if they want one, nor does it prevent a business from recommending or suggesting these interventions for their employees, nor does it prevent an employer from requesting a health screening to ensure they are physically capable of doing the job they are applying for. Rather, it strictly prohibits coerced medical treatment.
Why is a “No Medical Mandate” policy the only reasonable, ethical, and moral response following covid?
A recent congressional report, We Can Do This: An Assessment of the Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID-19 Public Health Campaign, reveals egregious efforts to propagandize public health messaging meant to manipulate the public’s perception of covid and increase the acceptance of unsafe and untested medical interventions like masking and vaccination. In other words, public health and mass media were weaponized to modify the public’s behavior in a massive medical and psychological experiment. The full effect of this unfathomable attack on human rights may not be known for generations as researchers continue to evaluate the physical and socioeconomic impact of covid shutdowns and mandates. This congressional report exposes the massive effort by the American government to deceive the American people. Messaging like that in the image below was intentionally formulated to exact a compliant response — this manipulation has no place in public health. The video referenced in the image below was released in June 2021. By then, the CDC was already aware of increased incidence of myocarditis in young men, and yet they continued to promote covid vaccination for children as young as 12 while not disclosing the known risks as is required by federal law.
In conjunction with other congressional reports like The Censorship-Industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration pointing to extensive efforts by the government to censor truthful speech related to early and effective COVID treatments, mask and vaccine ineffectiveness and harms, the government and its public health agencies deserve no trust.
While the Louisiana Department of Health should have served as the state’s safeguard against such wrongdoing, the agency and government leaders, including former Governor Edwards, were active participants instead. State and private sector programs intended to increase vaccine uptake, like lotteries and financial bonuses, were highly unethical. Additionally, targeted messaging meant to ostracize and dehumanize the minority who refused to comply with covid overreach was inherently immoral.
Medical mandates fundamentally violate voluntary informed consent. When any form of intentional coercion or deception enters the medical consent process, it is a human rights violation. For informed consent to be valid, an individual must be able to refuse a medical intervention without fear of discrimination or retaliation. Should the patient undergo medical treatment as a result of coercion, it should be considered medical battery or detrimental reliance.
A president in obvious mental decline mandated an experimental drug on our military and healthcare professionals through executive order.
Medical mandates threatened our nation’s security. President Joe Biden mandated covid vaccines and masks through executive order in 2021. It was embarrassingly apparent that Biden had impaired mental capacity at the time. Recently, it was revealed that the press hid the impairment for years. It is reasonable to question whether Biden was of sound mind when he signed off on the EO. If bad actors were intent on causing catastrophic harm to our military and first responders, including doctors and nurses, they now know exactly how to do it - and there’s nothing to stop them in the future.
Now that the harms associated with masks and vaccines are more widely known, it is reasonable to consider the possibility of intentional ill-intent with the covid vaccine mandates.
What about private companies?
The legislature is tasked with regulating harmful business practices. Allowing business owners to dictate medical procedures for their employees allows them to also practice medicine without a license. Mandates guarantee that the healthcare industry will remain perpetually understaffed in Louisiana as healthcare workers flee to “health freedom” states like Florida. Since 2021, employees across the country have been awarded damages in wrongful termination suits where employers ignored religious exemptions provided by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Simply put, vaccine mandates hurt businesses - as they should.
The Louisiana constitution states that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the INDIVIDUAL. It’s time to recognize that when the state chooses to protect an unwritten “right” of business owners to determine what medical interventions their employees must undergo, the state has chosen who will be the master and who will be the slave.
Are medical mandates justified given the supposed benefit to society?
Public health claims about ALL vaccines demand further investigation. The Select Committee on Homeland Security was presented with evidence by attorney Aaron Siri that no vaccine on the childhood schedule — not just the covid vaccines — has undergone sufficient clinical trial evaluations to determine safety, meaning they lacked either an inert placebo control group, long term safety monitoring, sufficient clinical trial participants, or all three. This, again, is unconscionable. The human rights violations are too enormous to quantify, knowing that parents, students, and employees are manipulated into receiving these shots for themselves or their children dozens of times over. Watch all of Siri’s testimony in the article below.
Aaron Siri Testifies Before Louisiana's Select Committee on Homeland Security
As a result of Representative Chuck Owen’s HR133, the Select Committee on Homeland Security convened on Wednesday, September 25th to review the state’s response to covid. One of the committee’s invit…
How can we protect businesses in light of the hysteria and panic evoked by pandemic propaganda?
Remove civil liability from any school or business that DOES NOT mandate or require vaccination of any kind.
Historically, no business or school was civilly liable for the mitigation of a respiratory infection because it is an impossible and unreasonable task — cost and labor-prohibitive. In 2020, the legislature passed legislation requiring businesses to follow federal and state health guidelines or face liability. The cost of implementing ridiculous and unscientific mitigation policies, followed by the burden of vaccine mandates from Biden, made businesses pawns in a mad game. Representative Danny McCormick successfully passed legislation in 2021 to protect businesses that did not mandate covid vaccination, but Edwards vetoed it. Mandates have harmed businesses in multiple ways. The legislature would do well to protect businesses - and employees - by removing civil liability for NOT mandating vaccination.
Health is a personal responsibility, even during a public health emergency. The government’s most important responsibility is protecting the rights of Louisianans. Following the covid debacle, removing the possibility of vaccine mandates is a reasonable and rational approach to prevent what could only be deemed a human rights disaster unlike anything seen in living memory.
This is the most important recommendation we can make to the Louisiana Legislature: to protect individual rights, the law must prohibit medical mandates.
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