A department spokesperson confirmed Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham had ordered his staff to stop engaging in media campaigns and community health fairs to encourage vaccinations, even as the state has experienced a surge in influenza.
Abraham’s announcement occurred the same day vaccine skepticRobert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in by the U.S. Senate to serve as President Donald Trump’s health secretary.
In a separate letter posted on the department’s website, Louisiana’s surgeon general decried “blanket government mandates” for vaccines and criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 vaccination push. Individuals should make their own decisions about vaccinations, Abraham said.
I will take a 1 in 10 million risk of having a bad side affect from a vaccine compared with the 1 in 100 or even 1 in 1000 chance of bad side effects from something like tetanus, measles, chicken pox, etc.
We also don’t give vaccines to everyone. If someone is at a higher risk of having negative side effects, they do not necessarily get the one they will have a reaction to. For instance, my wife is on immunosuppresants and was never able to receive the MMR vaccine because it uses a live attenuated form of the viruses and she would likely get a full blown case of each. But that also puts her at severe risk when there is some numb nuts in the area who didn’t get vaccinated because “they did their research” and came to a wrong conclusion that vaccines are super harmful and cause autism and mercury poisoning and have government trackers in them but then end up getting a case of the measles and spreading it to dozens of people.
You obviously have personal reasons and you will feel like everyone needs to vaccinate because it puts your wife at risk.