An organization of six Republican lawmakers from Arizona and the United States, several of whom have criticized efforts to save yourself and the spread of COVID-19, said it would investigate the state’s response to the pandemic.
The Southwest Intergovernmental Committee on the Novel Coronavirus will hold its first meetings on May 25 and 26, according to a press release from the Arizona State Senate Republican Caucus. Health Organization in February 2020. COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
“From the looks of this committee, it seems to think we’ve done too much (COVID-19 mitigation),” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, which based on the pandemic, Arizona rarely does enough. to save you the disease and death of the virus.
The committee will be chaired by state Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, a registered nurse who said she lost her nursing job because she refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19. In a written statement, Shamp said the committee “committed to holding others accountable for the injustices suffered. “The group’s vice president is T. J. Shope, a Coolidge Republican who co-owns a family business, Shope’s IGA Supermarket.
“Arizonans deserve to know the main points of the precise mishandling of the pandemic,” Shamp wrote in an email to The Arizona Republic on Monday.
Other committee members come with state Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear, and 3 Republican members of Congress from Arizona: Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Eli Crane. Organization, and Crane one of the co-sponsors.
During the pandemic, Biggs suggested Arizonans violate federal and state COVID-19 regulations and promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 preventative measure, even though it was not for prophylactic use through the federal or state government.
Gosar, who has a dental degree and once practiced dentistry in Flagstaff, has promoted the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 despite warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it can cause disease. serious.
There is still no convincing evidence that ivermectin does anything to help save death in COVID-19 patients, or that it prevents others from transmitting the COVID-19 virus, but Gosar said otherwise in a September 2022 tweet. That same tweet, Gosar called Dr. Anthony Fauci a liar.
Biggs, Crane and Gosar for an investigation into the U. S. reactionThe U. S. Department of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who coordinated the nation’s COVID-19 efforts and served as Biden’s lead medical adviser in 2021. and 2022.
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The Senate Republicans’ press release states that the GOP coronavirus committee “will meet to gather expert data and give the public a formal position to share their stories, experiences, and complaints related to the pandemic response across public fitness departments and systems of care. “
Specifically, the committee will compare “fitness protocols and guidance for the general public” and “incentives to fund fitness facilities” as part of its review of federal, state and local efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the press release. The committee’s goal is to “identify, where appropriate, conceivable legal remedies that oppose Americans or entities. “
Senate Republicans say the committee will produce a report before the end of 2024.
The federal public fitness emergency for COVID-19 will end on May 11, although as of April 18, the disease was still killing more than 1,000 Americans per week. As of April 22, COVID-19 had killed 33,395 Arizonans, according to state data.
Humble criticized Arizona for not establishing more incentives for state citizens to get the COVID-19 vaccine, such as the widespread need to get vaccinated to move into public office. COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Arizona has been below the national average during the pandemic. .
Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, presented monetary incentives to families and school districts that rejected mask mandates during the pandemic. He has been widely criticized for failing to implement a statewide mask order and for not considering an on-site shelter. order amid dire warnings about the looming crisis in Arizona hospitals in November 2020 and December 2020. Arizona has since elected Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, as governor.
During the pandemic, Ducey said his policies were to balance the negative economic and social effects of end businesses and schools with the risk COVID-19 posed to the lives of Arizonans.
COVID-19 in Arizona has a political problem, as it has been across the country, with many Republicans arguing that the mitigations infringe on individual freedoms.
Earlier this year, Senate Republicans rejected a key appointment to Hobbs’ cabinet. Dr. Theresa Cullen, director of the Pima County Health Department, who selected through Hobbs to head the state’s fitness department, did not apply for the task days after an hour-long discussion. through Republican lawmakers. Republicans, adding Shamp, asked about his role in COVID-19 policies when they interviewed Cullen, and added his role in setting up Pima County’s curfew, lockdowns, and mask and vaccination policies.
Shamp said in an email that the “health formula as a whole,” adding the Arizona Department of Health Services and the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is not yet in the U. S. being used and may have prevented hospitalization, and that “elected and unelected officials were blindly making decisions about the recommendations of the federal government and Big Pharma. “
A study published March 23 in The Lancet found that Arizona had the highest cumulative standardized COVID-19 death rate in the United States during a period between Jan. 1, 2020, and July 31, 2022. The study standardized death rates by adjusting for the state’s age profile and prevalence of chronic fitness situations such as cancer, diabetes and smoking rates. The authors of the examination included researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Lancet study found that the COVID-19 death rate in West Virginia, Mississippi and Arizona in the study era was similar to that of the three countries with the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world in the same era: Russia, Bulgaria and Peru.
A lower poverty rate, a higher average number of years of schooling and a higher proportion of others expressing interpersonal trust were statistically linked to lower infection and death rates, according to the Lancet study. The study also found that states where higher percentages of the population identified as black or Hispanic were linked to higher cumulative death rates.
Getting vaccinated was also important, the authors found.
“Our findings recommend that vaccination policy is associated with fewer COVID-19 deaths,” the authors wrote, echoing many other reports and evidence-based studies.
Humble said he had been contacted to speak before the Republican committee, but said he would do so if asked.
“The knowledge made it very clear that Arizona had the worst functionality in the entire country in this Lancet report,” Humble said. “Are they going to beat Peru?
Contact journalist Stephanie Innes at Stephanie. Innes@gannett. com or 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes.