Louisiana’s well being division has been barred from promoting or selling vaccines for flu, COVID-19, and mpox, according to reporting by NPR, KFF Health News, and New Orleans Public Radio WWNO.
Their investigative report—primarily based on interviews with a number of well being division staff who spoke on the situation of anonymity for concern of retaliation—revealed that staff had been advised of the startling coverage change in conferences in October and November and that the coverage could be applied quietly and never put into writing.
Ars Technica has contacted the well being division for remark and can replace this submit with any new data.
The well being division offered an announcement to NPR saying that it has been “reevaluating each the state’s public well being priorities in addition to our messaging round vaccine promotion, particularly for COVID-19 and influenza.” The assertion described the change as a transfer “away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic steering” to a stance through which “immunization for any vaccine, together with practices like masks carrying and social distancing, are a person’s private alternative.”
According to staff, the brand new coverage cancelled commonplace fall flu vaccination occasions this 12 months and impacts each different side of the well being division’s work, as NPR defined:
“Employees couldn’t ship out press releases, give interviews, maintain vaccine occasions, give shows or create social media posts encouraging the general public to get the vaccines. They additionally couldn’t put up indicators on the division’s clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines had been accessible on website.”
“We’re actually speaking about deaths”
The change comes amid a harmful swell of anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation in Louisiana and throughout the nation. President-elect Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a high-profile anti-vaccine advocate and one of the prolific spreaders of vaccine misinformation—to move the US Department of Health and Human Services.
