HJNO Nov/Dec 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  NOV / DEC 2024 15 THE PROMPT Rep. Kathy Edmonston So good to hear com- mon sense, you just have no idea. I’m inter- ested in the healthcare workers and the adults that have been forced to take the shot and have not wanted to do it. I have a simple question. Would y’all support legislation to take care of our healthcare workers and the employees in our state, that have been so, to me, wrongfully pushed into something that was so against everything they believed in. Abraham Absolutely. I see, now, vaccine injury every day of my practice, whether that’s an arrhythmia, whether it’s an atrial fibrillation, whether it’s a myocarditis, whether it’s a vasculitis in the lower extrem- ities. And we’re learning because these stud- ies, again, that were suppressed, are start- ing to finally be shown some light. Yes, to your question would I support, but know that you’re going to see, going forward, a lot more of the vaccination injuries. If you look at VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — and, again, I think I’m right on my statistics, you can fact check it — but in the last four years that the reporting of adverse events from the COVID vaccine, specifically, have gone up almost 2000%. Coleman That’s correct, yeah. Rep. Edmonston Wow, that’s unbelievable. I think I know how both of you feel about the doctor-patient relationship. That’s very important to me. You know, we had a bill last session that didn’t get through, but we will be bringing it back that has to do with the off-label drugs and I don’t know if it was assumed we were talking about some drugs in particular, but Dr. Coleman, you have a great example as an ophthalmologist with all of your drops that you use that are really off label. And so why in the world would we not want that? Coleman It’s a little bit blowing that that even comes up in legislation for something that has is a long-standing, well established prin- ciple. It seems that based on the experience of the past that it may be worth protecting it with legislation. But I think it’s the default position. I think anything other than that was a big deviation from a long-standing precedent today. Rep. Edmonston To me, that’s really what happened with this whole pandemic – or supposed pandemic – is we destroyed so many of the traditional things that have been good for us. The doctor-patient rela- tionship, off-label drugs destroyed because of information that was incorrect. So, I just appreciate both of you and thank you so much, doctor, everything. Abraham I just want to add to what Dr. Cole- man said. In America, it’s such a problem and such an arduous process to get a drug labeled for a specific cause. The manufac- turers of drug companies, they know this drug is useful and beneficial for so many other things, but to go through that process again, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re not going to do that because they know as docs we’re going to use it for the right thing anyway. There is misperception in this. I truly in my heart of hearts believe this was a federal issue from top down. They tried to make the term off-labeling toxic. They did not explain, because they didn’t want to explain, because they didn’t want us to use those off-label drugs on our COVID patients, what it actually was. Had the gen- eral public understood, been informed, we would be having a completely different conversation. Rep. Edmonston I completely agree, yes sir. Rep. Beryl A. Amedee Dr. Abraham, your comments have been completely refresh- ing today. I intend to go back and watch the video, and maybe transcribe them and share. So, thank you. During the pandemic, when the former governor would come on and do press conferences, the end of the report was always about how hospitals were over capacity, so, many times, I would be contacted directly or indirectly by hos- pital staff saying, “Hey, I work at that hos- pital, and we are not even at capacity.”And often on social media people would drive by certain hospitals and see there was no line, there weren’t cars. So surely, we had some hospitals that did max their capac- ity, but I think that it was exaggerated, and I’m being kind by using the word “exagger- ated.”My question to you is, in the event that hospitals were over capacity due to COVID patients, are you aware of how often that might have been simply self-inflicted by having staff shortages? Abraham I am not aware of what that num- ber is. I understand that the same way you do, but as far as giving you a number or per- centage, I just don’t know. Rep. Amedee OK. I don’t know that we’ll ever find out, but it was interesting to me that while certain staff were being fired because they refused to take a certain jab, hospitals were screaming that we are understaffed. And it’s like, “Yeah!” So, I’ll leave that one alone. Has there been any effort or will there be any effort to review the death records and correct the statistics so that we have an actual accurate report of how many in our state died “from COVID” versus died “with COVID.” Abraham I hope so, yes. Rep. Amedee Good. So, somebody’s moving on that, you’re pursuing that? Abraham We are, yes, I don’t know where we’re at in the state. And again, that’s also an arduous process, but we want to be com- pletely transparent at our level. Rep. Amedee When a person dies, who recently had a COVID shot, or actually any other immunization for that matter, is this considered at all in the autopsy, or is it noted at all in the autopsy report?