Arizona Republican lawmakers heard hours of comments Thursday from a number of doctors, lawyers and doctors known for challenging the use of vaccines and public fitness measures to combat COVID-19 infections.
There are no representatives from hospitals or public fitness agencies who have been in the COVID-19 reaction scheduled for the Southwest Intergovernmental Committee’s two-day event on the novel coronavirus, which continues Friday.
The committee is chaired by state Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, a registered nurse who said she lost her nursing job and refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The group’s vice president is T. J. Shope, a Coolidge Republican who in the past co-owned a family business, Shope’s IGA Supermarket. The other committee member is state Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Goodyear.
The six-member committee 3 Republican members of Congress from Arizona: Representatives Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Eli Crane.
Before a debt ceiling debate in Washington, D. C. , the three showed up Thursday.
Gosar and Biggs provided pre-recorded commentary that was shown at the event, and a spokesperson for Crane said he also provided such commentary to show at some point during the event.
Joining the committee Thursday were cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, who earned a reputation for spreading false data about the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Dr. George Fareed, who publicly promoted the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, though they were never legal through the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. U. S. as effective treatments.
The other user at Thursday’s event, Dr. Lela Lewis, an Arizona obstetrician/gynecologist who is part of an organization called Liberty and Health Alliance, says she has helped others get devoted exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
Writing about the occasion Thursday, Rolling Stone noted that Lewis produced a YouTube video in which he described the public reaction to the pandemic as “Satan’s holistic plan. “
The event has been called a call to other people who in QAnon conspiracy theories because of his call and is partially funded by The America Project, for which Montenegro works. It indexed the nonprofit political organization in its financial disclosure form last year.
The America Project has promoted a series of baseless electoral plots. Former Overstock. com CEO Patrick Byrne and Mike Flynn, former national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, the group.
Flynn had his Twitter account suspended when the social media platform was cut off from other people spreading QAnon conspiracies after the storming of the U. S. Capitol. U. S.
The official convening of the committee would be properly abbreviated as NCSIC, because “southwest” is one word, two. But when Shamp tweeted a Project America flyer for the event, he included the acronym “NCSWIC” in his post. slogan used through QAnon.
Officials from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League and an Arizona State University researcher noted that the committee’s call appeared to be a call to QAnon believers.
Within the QAnon movement, the acronym “NCSWIC” stands for “nothing can prevent what is happening” and serves as a reference to the end of the “deep state” that former President Donald Trump is trying to provoke. The three state lawmakers involved declined to answer questions about who appointed the committee and followed the QAnon movement.
Shamp told Thursday’s assembly that some speakers from the medical network who were scheduled to speak on the occasion had to cancel “because they were involved in malpractice insurance being collateral damage to their participation here today. “
There was a wonderful loss of life from COVID-19 that Shamp called “largely inevitable,” as well as an “unnecessary loss” of livelihood and freedom from the pandemic, Shamp said.
Shamp also said he had never been tested for COVID-19 because he feared hurting himself by putting a swab on his nose. But he said he had symptoms consistent with a COVID-19 infection, he said.
“People have been cancelled, other people have been silenced and other people have had their livelihoods threatened and their livelihoods lost, all to stand up for what they are true and just. I find it so sad that those things are still happening. ,” she said.
Montenegro told the committee, as well as dozens of members of the public who attended, that masks and vaccination requirements do not respect people’s private ideals or medical autonomy. He referred to social distancing air dates, which made other people laugh.
“Many of us asked, have we given up too much this time?” declared Montenegro, as choruses of “yes” poured in from others present. “Have we given up too much of our personal independence? It was rhetoric. “Have we allowed worry and the unknown to not only influence the possible choices we made, but also to influence our own ability to make the possible choices?Too often, that’s what happened that time. “
As of May 20, 33,502 Arizonans had lost their lives to the knowledge of the Arizona Department of Health Services, and Arizona, through various measures, had one of the worst COVID-19 death rates in the country.
A study published March 23 in The Lancet found that Arizona had the highest cumulative standardized COVID-19 death rate in the United States over a period from January 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022. The study normalized death rates by adjusting death rates by state for age profile and prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and smoking rates. The authors of the review included researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
It’s possible that better control of the pandemic in Arizona, coupled with human behavior, has racked up some of the lives lost to COVID-19, said Dr. Bob England, interim director of the Arizona Immunization Association, who said he was not invited to speak at the GOP event.
England said incorrect information about vaccines and masks is costing lives and creating a “preventable national tragedy” caused by the policy.
“If you look at our death rate compared to other states in the pandemic. Without much greater economic costs, I think some of the deaths could have been prevented,” England said. “We have over 33,000 deaths. . . At least 10,000 probably closer to part (may have been prevented) if politics hadn’t been played out. If it’s part of the deaths, it’s part of the hospitalizations, part of the traumas. It’s very frustrating for me. “
Although the Arizona legislature featured a loose webcast of the audience, The America Project, which paid for speakers and accommodation, also provided a webcast on its site, with a link to donate to the group.
Byrne, who was a major donor to the Arizona Senate Republican “audit” for the 2020 election, said his purpose was not to raise cash at the event.
“Overall, those are balancing occasions for us at best,” he wrote to The Arizona Republic. “Are you kidding? You write about them as if we were there, making money from them. as much of our expenses as imaginable with the meeting. “
During the lunch interlude, The America Project aired promotional videos on its webcast. This included a discussion with men affiliated with an Oregon organization called Citizens Restoring Liberty who have protested COVID mitigation efforts in their state, adding protests at the Bandon Dunes golf course.
After that, they showed footage of former President Donald Trump discussing the federal Right to Try Act, signed in 2018, which allows patients experimental treatments.
Arizona Democrats also tried to raise money for the event, submitting a request at the hearing and calling it an “incredible waste of resources. “
“This committee will be comprised of genuine doctors, scientists and fitness experts. Instead, this is an organization of opportunists selling incorrect information and seeking to bend,” the emailed request read.
Shamp said Thursday in the assembly that he intends to propose legislation to mitigate the public harms Arizona may ever suffer in a similar pandemic.
Arizona’s legislature has already limited the government’s allowable response to a pandemic with a bill signed by Gov. Doug Ducey last year.
Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, sponsored Senate Bill 1009 because she was concerned about governors using their emergency powers during the pandemic to impose restrictions without a clear end date.
Shamp and Montenegro asked how state officials can simply spare you the excesses of the federal government in the pandemic.
McCullough said Thursday that Arizona is restricting medical advice to allow doctors more freedom in treating patients as they see fit.
The speakers, McCullough, spent much of the day disparaging COVID-19 vaccines, as they have in previous appearances.
Montenegro said he fell ill with COVID-19 in 2021 and, despite being treated with nutrients and hydroxychloroquine, ended up in the hospital. He said the doctor was impolite to him because Montenegro was not vaccinated and sent him home.
“She jumped headfirst. It says you have COVID pneumonia. You have to go home. If you come out of it, think about getting vaccinated,” he said, gasping with the audience.
Although he ended up with blood clots in his lungs, he survived, he said.
Fareed cautioned that Montenegro probably would have gotten so sick because he didn’t take the right dose of hydroxychloroquine. McCullough said Montenegro’s story provides many training problems and warned that if he had won a COVID-19 vaccine after this case, it could have killed him as well.
In all risk-benefit analyses, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine outweighed the harm it could cause, England said. And he said deaths from the omicron variant would have been much lower if more people had received a booster dose.
“The vaccine is spectacular,” he said. In January 2022 in Arizona, that month with the knowledge of the Arizona Department of Health Services, if you were fully vaccinated and reinforced, you were running 1/180th of dying as if you were not vaccinated at all. “
“We are incredibly fortunate to live in a time when, in one year, we produced a vaccine against the pandemic and it will be repeated next time. But we also live in a time when we are so divided that other people are in a position to pursue conspiracies and push other people to threaten their lives for political purposes. “
Contact journalist Stephanie Innes at Stephanie. Innes@gannett. com or 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes.