HJNO Nov/Dec 2024

POLITICIZATION OF COVID 10 NOV / DEC 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, MD Thank you, Mr. Chairman, RalphAbraham, current surgeon general of Louisiana. To my imme- diate left is Dr. Wyche Coleman, our deputy surgeon general. I’ve been a practicing phy- sician for now a few decades, was a member of Congress for six years. I was secretary of LDH for a short time after Governor Landry appointed me, and then we moved into to the surgeon general position. In the last four years, as far as the COVID pandemic has taken place, I would conservatively guesstimate that I’ve treated over 15,000 COVID patients from the very minor, with the runny nose, to the very severe, where I do CAT scans of their chest, and 80% of their lungs are whited out with what’s called the ground glass appearance. So, Mr. Chair- man, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I’m going to read from my prepared statements and then I will certainly wel- come any questions. And I do expect many questions will be poised regarding what I would have done differently during the COVID pandemic had I been head of pub- lic health. The short answer is, just about everything. There has been ample time to reflect on these questions. Upon retirement fromCongress, I imme- diately returned to full medical practice pri- mary treating COVID for the better part of now four years. It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, coun- terproductive, and antithetical to the core principles of a free society. Mask mandates; lockdowns; forced closures of churches, schools, and businesses; coerced vaccina- tions; and suppression or intimidation of those who resisted are just a few exam- ples of policies endorsed by the previous administration, which I opposed then and still oppose now. Not only because the poli- cies were practically ineffective at achieving the stated goals, but primarily because they violate constitutional protections guaran- teed to all Americans. Medical boards threatened providers who did not go along with the mainstream narrative; pharmacists refused to fill valid prescriptions for repurposed medicines written by licensed providers; federal authorities restricted their use of monoclonal antibodies just when we needed them the most. We were extremely fortunate to have Governor Landry as attorney general at that time to provide a very strong counter to these tyrannical forces. As a primary care doctor, I supported him in his efforts then, and as surgeon general, I support themnow. This experience has brought into focus — forces have been progressively eroding the doctor patient relationship for a long time. Collectively, we can call them third- party interests. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers, and government are a few examples. Their primary interest is something other than that patient getting better. That is not to say they don’t want the sick people to get better or that their intentions are all malicious, but only that their first goal, by definition, is not patient centric. They want to sell the product, increase the stock price, push a political agenda. These third-party interests have inserted themselves between the doctor and the patient for their own benefit and to the patient’s detriment. In many cases, it seems that they have hijacked public health to be their marketing legacy. Arecent survey showed that trust in doctors had declined from 70% in 2020 to 40% in 2024. The cause is not a mystery. People have been repeatedly given bad advice, and they know it now. Public health was a major source of this bad information. In order to regain their trust, we will have to do something radical, and that is simply tell the truth. A glaring example of bad advice from public health was the promotion of COVID vaccines for kids. It was known early on that the disease posed nearly zero risk to healthy children, and that the real risk of harmwas associated with the vaccine. In medicine, risk-benefit ratios guide our decisions, and in this case, risk always outweighed any possible benefit. Parents knew best, and less than 5% chose to vaccinate their kids under five. Still, pressure was applied, marketing gimmicks were employed, and in defiance of all reason and logic, some continue pushing it to this day. These efforts are not increasing COVID vaccine uptake in kids. The only metric changing is trust in doctors and public health. The prevailing justification for this practice was to protect the elderly, but we should be reminded that in a moral society, adults make sacrifices for the benefit of the children, not the other way around. To chart a better course for the future, we must return to some very basic principles. First, do no harm. This simple idea, origi- nated from the Hippocratic Oath, reminds us of our primary duty as physicians, and I believe it equally applicable to public health. When in doubt, choose freedom. Science, as a whole, is defined by lack of consensus. Our goal should be to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information possible and facilitate debate and discourse in the search of truth, rather than suppress it. Despite the laundry list of mistakes made in the past four years, there’s much cause for hope going forward for Louisiana. Legislation passed last session has taken several significant steps toward limiting third-party interests in medical decision making. I look forward to working with you all in the next session to further those efforts. Secretary Harrington and I are in lockstep in our commitment to implement policy at LDH that focuses on restoration of the patient-doctor relationship. There are many great people at the agency working hard to move healthcare in a positive direction for our state. I would ask for some patience and understanding that the Department of Health is like a huge ship with a tiny rudder. Rest assured, the wheel is turned now to full deflection, but results will take some time to fully come to fruition. At my core, I’m an optimist about the future in general, and especially the future of Louisiana under our current leadership. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to lead these hearings. It has been said that the main lesson of history here is that we learn