The country’s largest measles outbreak in over 25 years is currently devastating South Carolina. However, Ralph Abraham, the number two official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., just dismissed the chaos as simply the “cost of doing business.”
According to a Washington Post report, Abraham, who was previously Louisiana’s top health official and known for unwinding vaccine promotion events, acknowledged that vaccination is the best way to prevent the disease. However, he quickly added, “We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom.”
An NPR investigation found Louisiana health officials told staff to stop promoting vaccines for COVID, flu and mpox, holding flu shot events
Rosemary Westwood at NPR:
A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.
Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop.
NPR has confirmed the policy was discussed at this meeting, and at two other meetings held within the department's Office of Public Health, on Oct. 3 and Nov. 21, through interviews with four employees at the Department of Health, which employs more than 6,500 people and is the state's largest agency.
According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.
Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department's work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.
The new policy in Louisiana was implemented as some politicians have promoted false information about vaccines and as President-elect Donald Trump seeks to have anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And some public health experts are concerned that if other states follow Louisiana, the U.S. could face rising levels of disease and further erosion of trust in the nation's public health infrastructure.
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A blow to public health practice
Staff at Louisiana's health department fear the new policy undermines their efforts to protect the public, and violates the fundamental mission of public health: to prevent illness and disease by following the science.
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Experts fear consequences of undermining trust in vaccine
Last year, 652 people in Louisiana died of COVID, including five children. Louisiana currently is tied with DC for the highest rate of flu in the U.S. In 2022 alone, flu killed 586 people in Louisiana.
Every health department staff member, former staff member, public health official and vaccine expert contacted by NPR repeated the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe, effective, and essential for preventing illness, hospitalizations, and deaths.
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Policy change follows new governor's election
Until becoming Louisiana governor in early 2024, Republican Jeff Landry served as the state's attorney general for eight years. During the pandemic, he criticized the state's COVID response and filed lawsuits over federal and state vaccine mandates.
On Dec. 6, 2021, Attorney General Landry spoke at a state committee hearing against adding COVID to the childhood immunization schedule. At his side was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who presented false claims about COVID vaccines.
This year the Republican-controlled legislature passed five bills — all signed by Gov. Landry — and two resolutions aimed at loosening vaccine requirements, limiting the power of public health authorities and sowing doubt about vaccine safety.
Gov. Landry also appointed Dr. Ralph Abraham, a family medicine doctor, to be the state's surgeon general. That position co-leads the Department of Health, and is tasked with crafting health policy that is then carried out by the departmental co-leader, the secretary.
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Abraham said masking, lockdowns and vaccination requirements "were practically ineffective," that COVID vaccine adverse effects have been "suppressed," that "we don't know" whether blood from people who've been vaccinated is safe for donation and that "we hope and pray" COVID vaccines don't increase the risk miscarriages.
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A slippery slope to future disease outbreaks
Experts told NPR they feared a policy that undermines COVID, flu and mpox vaccinations could have a spillover effect, reducing public trust in vaccinations overall, including those given to children to prevent a host of dangerous and deadly illnesses.
"I believe that we will see measles cases. I believe we will see whooping cough cases. I believe we will likely see meningitis outbreaks," said Hood.
In the Nov. 14 meeting, a staff member asked whether the ban on promoting vaccines applied to children's immunizations, but the answer was noncommittal, according to an employee with knowledge of the meeting's details.
"My understanding was it's not clear to what extent we might be able to promote childhood vaccinations," the staff member said.
(The Louisiana Department of Health's statement to NPR said the changes in policy and messaging do not apply to childhood immunizations.)
Nationally, vaccination rates for serious childhood diseases have been falling in recent years, including in Louisiana.
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The rise of public health officials promoting misinformation
Louisiana isn't the only state where public health officials have recently announced controversial decisions and repeated false or discredited health theories.
Florida's surgeon general has made false claims about COVID vaccines, undermined school vaccine mandates for the measles and said local officials should stop adding fluoride to water supplies.
The consequences of anti-vaxxer extremism and anti-public health sentiments being normalized by Republicans: Louisiana bans the state's Department of Health from promoting COVID, flu, or mpox vaccines.
Dr. Ralph Abraham, who as a state surgeon general ordered health officials to stop promoting mass vaccination, will serve as the US Centers
Dr. Ralph Abraham, who as a state surgeon general ordered health officials to stop promoting mass vaccination, will serve as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s principal deputy director.
Within the one, undifferentiated substance of Consciousness, the two principles, masculine & feminine, together bring forth the play or drama of creation.
When the principles are relational & reciprocal, in giving & receiving, a harmonious or orderly world is brought forth-all needs can be provided for.
The uncreated substance of Consciousness, the vast ocean of potential, is ancient & eternal. But to bring forth a manifested reality (order) out of the depths (chaos) requires an instrument with which to incant the sounds that stirs up waves that will roll out into the manifest outer reality as our life-story— this instrument of desire is the heart, where intention & emotive power is held — the lyre & voice.
To bring forth a reality we desire we must sink beneath the surface of form, the upperworld, into the depths, the underworld.
But here we can't travel with a physical body, we journey through portals of the mind, states of Consciousness- of dream, vision or hypnagogia.
Releasing aspects of our old life, to die, to be composted & to return to pure substance, is to give back to chaos— the python of the deep who consumes, from where we can rebirth & be reconstructed in a wholly renewed way.
Deconstruction or dismemberment is required & is prior to renewed order.
The snake bite is to be deconstructed, taken by kundalini & the alchemical fires of the underworld to be transformed & matured. This uncreated substance that is Consciousness/ matter itself, can only be melted & remoulded by Mother/ Nature in her womb cauldron & crucible.
Out of the abyss/chaos, rises life/Gaia & from the living & relations, love/Eros emerges into the world.
With excessive reason, a whole half of existence, the underworld, the dark, the feminine principle of feeling has been wiped out of existence— & without the right relation between the two principles the world can't come to peace.
Deep in the psyche, man is angry at woman for wielding feminine magical power over creation, & woman is angry at man, for ancient wounding, for entering & taking & betraying the primordial covenant of relation- that regardless of gender all forms are equally born of the primordial cosmic Mother.
Envying the magical & shamanic feminine power to create order out of chaos, through dying & rising- man wanted this power for himself.
Whereas the feminine felt into the power with intuition & dream, man had to conquer it with his understanding to control it with force.
The new, allowed roles for women in patriarchy was limited, to maiden, mother or crone- this formulation of the triple-goddess is for our times, however, in a time before this time, it signified stages of spiritual development & mastery of magical power or siddhi to harmonise the creation, as a result of realisation of the divine through the kundalini process or underworld journey with the great Goddess, who is pure power of manifestation, of Maya, the magical reality, herself.
Realising your substance as the substance of divine power & Consciousness opens up possibility to interact with phenomena, for example to call in rains for the lands, through the song in the heart.
As Louisiana's surgeon general, Ralph Abraham has labeled COVID-19 vaccines “dangerous” and halted officials from promoting mass vaccination
Graeme Demianyk at HuffPost:
Ralph Abraham, a supporter of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda and a fierce critic of COVID-19 vaccines, has reportedly been appointed to a highly influential position at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The appointment of Louisiana’s top health official as principal deputy director of the federal agency will be seen as a big win for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another noted vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist.
The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Abraham’s new position — effectively the second-in-command at the agency — on Tuesday. HuffPost has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment.
Working under Jim O’Neill, the CDC’s acting director, Abraham will have the platform to address a range of public health issues.
The 71-year-old was a physician and a veterinarian before a three-term stint as a Louisiana congressman.
He retired from Congress in 2020 after a failed bid for governor in 2019 and was appointed Louisiana’s surgeon general in 2024.
While overseeing the state’s health policies, Abraham publicly criticized COVID-19 vaccines.
“The COVID vaccines are dangerous,” he said in an X post in September. “I see the fallout in my clinic every day.”
In February, shortly after Kennedy was confirmed as HHS chief, Abraham announced in a memo to staff that the state’s health department “will no longer promote mass vaccination.”
Anti-vaxxer extremist Ralph Abraham have been given a plum position in the CDC.
See Also:
The Guardian: Louisiana official who called Covid-19 vaccines ‘dangerous’ given key CDC post
