Every time I put up a new post here, I end up griping that I need to post here more often. I do mean that.
Last week, as we read about these legislative hearings on the state's COVID response, we once again had to remind ourselves of the importance of taking notes as things happen. Otherwise, when the details of events come up later in a different context, you might miss the point. See, between the time that COVID arrived in Louisiana and the time when this committee took up its investigation, the state government has been taken over entirely by a paranoid anti-vax faction so whatever facts are brought to light now about the emergency response will, unfortunately, pass through that lens. Here, for example, is a representative taste of that atmosphere.
Dozens of anti-vaccine bills have died in the Louisiana Legislature since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultra-conservative lawmakers are gearing up for another fight.
In the process, truth has become a major casualty.
In two days of hearings last week on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security heard hours of testimony from doctors with fringe views on the COVID-19 virus. They included the state’s chief medical doctor, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who himself amplified misinformation. Abraham is a general practitioner who is also a veterinarian.
“It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, counterproductive and antithetical to the core principles of a free society,” Abraham said last Thursday, citing mask use and vaccines as examples of ineffective measures.
Abraham’s deputy surgeon general, ophthalmologist Dr. Wyche Coleman III, went a step further, touting the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations cause autism.
“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” Coleman told lawmakers.
Experts agree the amplification and legitimization of COVID-19 misinformation by state officials can have a detrimental impact on public health.
When asked if he was concerned the negative talk on vaccines could discourage people from getting vaccinated, committee chair Rep. Jay Gallé, R-Covington, replied, “So what if it does?”
So Baton Rouge is overrun with right wingers and this is the sort of thing we can expect to hear from them. It's interesting, though, that we get to hear a little bit of it from New Orleans Democrats like Alonzo Knox as well.
Knox is claiming no hospitals in Louisiana were overwhelmed during the pandemic, and said no media outlet reported that they were. Here’s a thread of reporting that disproves that. https://t.co/StC9FUFQZz
— Piper Hutchinson (@ByPiperHutch) September 26, 2024
Knox has become quite the character up there. Let's put a pin in that, actually. It's something we'll have to return to in more detail later. For now, let's just note that he looks to be following the Neil Abramson playbook. Politics is never short on guys who will enable whatever atrocity they have to just so that they get to be "in the room" for a while with its perpetrators.
But here is the thing. Just because the capitol is under the control of lunatics and the opportunists who flatter them, doesn't mean that these hearings won't stumble on a few unfortunate facts, in spite of all the nonsense drowning them out. So let's return to this hearing now. It's a good example of what I'm talking about here.
Jacques Thibodeaux, director of Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told a panel of state lawmakers Wednesday that the agency received “an inquiry” in March from the "major fraud investigation unit" of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
The inquiry was “in direct relation to the medical monitoring station” at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans that was originally set up in early 2020 as a 1,000-bed field hospital to treat patients with COVID-19 and relieve strain on hospitals.
Several lawmakers were gathered at the State Capitol Wednesday for a meeting of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security to gather information for a future report on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The field hospital was set up through no-bid contracts under emergency circumstances. Emergency circumstances tend to be closer to the norm in Louisiana than one would think is ideal. Having seen first hand how that plays out a few times, I thought it prudent to mark some things out for future reference. COVID began to affect Louisiana in March of 2020. It wasn't until May that I had a chance to sort some things out. This post is now a little bit of a time capsule, I guess.
Here's what was going on then.
Some local union leaders are angered that dozens of workers have been brought in from Texas to help convert the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center into a medical facility to deal with the coronavirus crisis, at a time when hundreds of their members are out of work.
The order to convert the convention center into a facility to provide up to 3,000 beds for spillover COVID-19 patients was made by Governor John Bel Edwards two weeks ago.
Two contracts for just over $76 million were quickly put out to bid. One for about $38 million, primarily to provide medical staff and services, went to BCFS Health and Human Services, a faith-based non-profit based in San Antonio, Texas that was formerly known as Baptist Child and Family Services.
According to an audit that December, BCFS ended up getting paid $89 million. We pointed out at the time that BCFS had recently taken in $179 million in federal contracts for its work on migrant detention facilities along the Texas-Mexico border. This was the so-called "kids in cages" operation. Remember when people cared about that? When the Trump Administration was spending money on contractors who put kids in cages? Now we have a Democratic candidate for President promising to do a bigger and tougher kids in cages program so I guess that's all good money now. But at the time it seemed pretty bad! And our Governor was directing money to accomplices in that endeavor.
This is how fast the framing can change and it's why you have to remember to write everything down. Otherwise you might also forget the things, everyone else clearly has, or at least expects you to ignore. Do we think, for example, that the current legislature in its pursuit of undiscovered fraud in the COVID resonpse is going to ask any questions about Mike Edmonson?
More about Edmonson's "series of controversies" here. The Advocate-Times-Pic should really link back to their own reporting when they reference it as context. There's a reason to write these things down, after all. In this case the reason is to remind ourselves that, while the political winds change, the essential corruption underlying it all remains universally intact. And unless you can see that for what it is, you're liable to get lost in the noise.Garner Environmental, a division of the Texas-based Ksolv group, counts former Louisiana State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson as a consultant. Edmonson resigned from the State Police amid a series of controversies at the agency in 2017.
The state paid Garner $9 million to establish and run a quarantine facility adjacent to the Convention Center, a project that lasted about a month. Nine patients stayed at the facility in all, according to Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.