As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation’s top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state’s health department saying that the state “will no longer promote mass vaccination” and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.
The memo echoes directives that state health employees say they were told in October and November. In meetings at the time, employees learned of a policy shift that would end seasonal campaigns for flu, COVID-19, and mpox vaccines, but it was to be implemented discreetly and not put in writing.
According to Abraham’s memo, the abandonment of lifesaving vaccination campaigns is in service of individual choice. “For many illnesses, vaccines are one tool in the toolbox of ways to combat severe illness,” according to The New York Times, which also obtained a copy of the memo.
In a separate, public-facing letter criticizing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Abraham made a similar argument. “Perhaps there are some treatments that every human being should take, but they are few and far between, and things that are good generally don’t have to be pushed by the government,” he wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Deputy Surgeon General Wyche Coleman.
In the internal memo to the health department, Abraham directed state health workers to only state facts about vaccination and point people to their doctors.
“Rather than instructing individuals to receive any and all vaccines, LDH staff should communicate data regarding the reduced risk of disease, hospitalization, and death associated with a vaccine and encourage individuals to discuss considerations for vaccination with their healthcare provider,” he wrote.
“Ripped in half”
Susan Hassig, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor emerita at Tulane University’s School of Public Health, told the Times-Picayune that this is problematic advice. Many people don’t have primary care providers. “They go to an urgent care or a clinic,” Hassig said. “In Louisiana, they go to the emergency room.”
The memo lands amid widespread fear that Kennedy’s appointment will lead to further erosion of America’s trust in vaccination and its vaccination rates. Already, rates of routine childhood vaccination in kindergartners across the nation have slipped into the range of 92 percent, woefully below the 95 percent threshold to prevent onward disease spread. Exemptions from school vaccination requirements are at an all-time high.
Further, the country is also in the midst of the worst flu season in 15 years. The percent of doctor’s visits for influenza-like illnesses (a standard metric for flu season) hit 7.8 percent this week, a high not seen since the 2009–2010 season amid the emergence of the H1N1 swine flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there have been at least 29 million illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations, and 16,000 deaths from flu so far this season. This week, 11 children died of flu, bringing the 2024–2025 pediatric death toll to 68.
Among the recent deaths was a healthy 9-year-old girl in North Carolina, who died from flu complications on January 29. “I literally feel like my heart has been ripped in half,” her mother told WRAL News.
Seasonal flu shots significantly reduce the risk of death, particularly in children.