LA Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham Issues Exemption Letter for Hospital Flu Vaccine and Mask Mandate
We have included instructions on how to get one.
For years, healthcare personnel (HCP) have been required to submit a request for exemption from flu vaccination (and all other vaccines) required in healthcare-related facilities utilizing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In most cases, the HCP is then forced to mask in the facility as an “accommodation” for the exemption.
Flu vaccines, similar to covid vaccines, do not prevent transmission or infection, have a relatively high risk of adverse events, increase vulnerability to other acute respiratory infections, provides no benefit to the patient population, and repeated doses increase the likelihood of vaccine failure — meaning recipients are more likely to get the flu with repeated annual doses.
These and other facts about flu vaccination can be found in this flyer created by the non-profit Physicians for Informed Consent.
Why do healthcare facilities continue to require annual flu vaccination?
Federal money.
Federal incentives like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program require most healthcare facilities to report “influenza vaccination for three categories of HCP: employees, licensed independent practitioners (non-employee physicians, advanced practice nurses, and physician assistants), and adult students/trainees and volunteers aged 18 and over.” A stipulation of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act [MMA] authorizes “CMS to pay hospitals that successfully report designated quality measures a higher annual update to their payment rates.” One of the designated quality measures is the HCP flu vaccination rate.
This MUST be one of the programs eliminated under a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Health and Human Services administration. Coercing employees to undergo medical treatment (flu vaccination) by incentivizing the employer through higher payment rates defies all medical ethics and is a human rights violation.
Now consider that flu vaccines have never been tested in pre-licensure clinical trials against an inert placebo.
The following is an image created by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in a December 2018 letter to address an HHS claim “that many pediatric vaccines have been investigated in clinical trials that included a placebo.” In fact, no vaccine on the childhood schedule has been tested in a pre-licensure clinical trial against an inert placebo, including flu vaccines which are given to both children and adults.
It is egregious that any medicine would be allowed on the market without a clinical trial against a true placebo, much less those that are mandated on our children and healthcare personnel, the two most vaccinated civilian demographics.
The only study conducted post-licensure against an inert placebo found that flu vaccination increases the recipients’ susceptibility to other non-influenza, acute respiratory infections including coronaviruses. In March 2020, when the Louisiana Department of Health under John Bel Edwards recommended flu vaccination to help stave off hospital overcrowding in the earliest days of the covid pandemic, we sent this study to LDH and others to warn that they could indeed be making the pandemic worse with population-wide flu vaccination.
It seems that more and more healthcare personnel are aware of these inadequacies, including our own Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham and Deputy Surgeon General Dr. Wyche Coleman. Last week, they provided this incredible letter explaining the coercive nature of the mandate and why HCP should not be required to take a flu vaccine or wear a mask in retribution for refusal.
There are no guarantees that the hospital will honor this letter but if you would like a personalized copy, please email us at info@healthfreedomla.org and we will send you the email address at LDH to receive a copy with your name.
We truly appreciate that Drs. Abraham and Coleman noted that this is an issue of informed consent. Informed consent implies the ability to say “no” to an unwanted medical intervention. When employees are threatened with job loss or a punitive measure like masking for refusal, coercion has entered the consent process and informed consent has been violated. To restore trust, we must remove all manner of coercion in the medical consent process and that includes workplace mandates.
Meanwhile, on X, John Bel Edwards’ former Communications Director at LDH and current Political Communications Professor at LSU, Alyson Neel, continues to draw attention to the inadequacies in her knowledge base. It would be difficult to find staff more inept than those at LDH during JBE’s administration who never followed FDA’s communication guidelines by informing the public of certain required information about Emergency Use Authorized drugs and medical devices. HFL filed a formal complaint with the FDA detailing the failings of LDH communications during covid.
It is unfortunate that, like former Secretary of Health Dr. Courtney Phillips, Alyson is still living off the taxpayer’s dime at LSU, but at least she is no longer responsible for communicating health guidance to the public. Their time at LDH is marked with coercion and incompetence. LDH should have provided a safeguard against medical tyranny during covid but instead, it was an active participant in the most catastrophic human rights violations of our time.
Under JBE, LDH repeatedly violated the most basic of human rights by coercing the public into undergoing experimental medical treatments without providing information they are required by law to provide under the terms of an EUA. The LDH covid vaccine lottery will go down in history as one of the more despicable public health stunts utilized to entice people to get an experimental vaccine, more so because children were involved. Speaking of children, let’s not forget Shots for Santa where LDH directly attributed being “nice” to being vaccinated.
Additionally, LDH repeatedly memorialized the number of covid deaths, using the death statistic to urge Louisianans to get a covid vaccine, while intentionally withholding from the public that people who had received multiple covid vaccinations were dying of covid. When HFL did a public records request in 2023, we found that 3,091 Louisianans had died of covid despite receiving multiple covid vaccinations. We noted in this article that LDH intentionally removed the “unvaccinated” statistic from the covid dashboard in an attempt to hide that data.
LDH under JBE failed the people of this state. The agency repeatedly breached medical ethics and human rights in its covid recommendations and public messaging.
Now, with Dr. Abraham at the helm, there is a chance to correct many wrongs including the attack on informed consent under the previous administration—this exemption letter represents a significant step in that direction.
Thank you to Surgeon General Abraham and Deputy Surgeon General Coleman for their bold efforts to protect every Louisianan’s right to informed consent.
Again, if you would like a copy of the letter, please email info@healthfreedomla.org and we will send you the LDH email address.
Additional resources:
Masks:
Pregnant women:
Below: At the October 2017 ACIP meeting, Dr. Wellington Sun, Director of the Division of Vaccines and Related Product Applications at the Center for Biologics Evaluations and Research (CBER) at the FDA commented on the off-label use of vaccines for pregnant women. The flu vaccine is given off-label for pregnant women.
Children:
Study: Assessment of temporally-related acute respiratory illness following influenza vaccination
Conclusion: Among children there was an increase in the hazard of ARI [acute respiratory infection] caused by non-influenza respiratory pathogens post-influenza vaccination compared to unvaccinated children during the same period. Potential mechanisms for this association warrant further investigation.
Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests
The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research.
Thimerosal (mercury):
Per the US CDC, multivalent vaccines contain thimerosal, usually around 250 micrograms per dose. These include Afluria Quadrivalent (245 ug), FluLaval Quadrivalent (<250 ug), Fluzone Quadrivalent (250 ug), Fluxcelvax Quadrivalent (250 ug), Afluria Seqirus (245 ug), Fluvirin Seqirus (250 ug).
Flu mist:
The administration of intranasal live attenuated influenza vaccine induces changes in the nasal microbiota and nasal epithelium gene expression profiles
Along with these host gene expression changes, LAIV led to significant changes in bacterial community structure with increases in the relative abundance of Staphylococcus and Bacteroides genera. These changes support murine models and clinical findings, suggesting that they represent the first steps towards the emergence of potentially pathogenic bacteria during natural upper respiratory tract infection. Further investigation is needed to better appreciate these complex host-microbiota interactions in true disease states.
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