More interesting than the news that the Louisiana Department of Health has taken a more holistic view of public health is the motivation behind those, including the media, who bemoan it.
Last week, National Public Radio ran a breathless piece about how LDH had deemphasized indiscriminate pushing of vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus and influenza and maybe the flu-like mpox, although its incidence in the U.S. in its weak form is rare and in its more virulent form nonexistent. Allegedly, LDH officials instructed employees not to make vigorous efforts to advise the public to get these vaccines and noted the department “is shifting away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance to a more informative approach aimed at enabling individuals, in consultation with their doctor, to make better decisions for themselves.”
That is an entirely appropriate and productive approach to these illnesses, all of which share the same characteristics, to varying degrees, that people with healthy immune systems and/or co-morbidities rarely become seriously ill from these. Mpox potentially is the most serious but can be taken care of with smallpox vaccination, although the less prevalent vaccine version in the U.S. dedicated to it does present a relatively high 1 in 175 rate of developing myocarditis/pericarditis among other less severe side effects, while the more prevalent vaccine hasn’t been studied enough to come up with a hard number although it is thought to be less deleterious.
