California Governor Gavin Newsom has been hailing a forthcoming 1,000-page report on “what we did right and what we did wrong” during the COVID pandemic, compiled by independent “experts” the governor’s office did not name. That was in late July, and while the report’s release awaits, the governor has created what amounts to a new Centers for Disease Control.
Those states imposed the “most draconian” mandates on masks, school closings, and vaccine coercion for children and employees.
On September 2, Newsom, Washington State Governor Bob Ferguson, and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek announced the West Coast Health Alliance “to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.” As Katy Grimes of the California Globe notes, those states imposed the “most draconian” mandates on masks, school closings, and vaccine coercion for children and employees. In a joint statement, the governors proclaimed:
President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists — and his blatant politicization of the agency — is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people. The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.
The tri-state alliance is based on the “Scientific Safety Review Workgroup,” which claimed to “confirm” in 2020 that “the Pfizer vaccine is safe and efficacious for public use.” The workgroup also “endorses the transparency and objectivity of the FDA and CDC review processes and the rigor, validity and reliability of their analyses” and “recommends that our states avoid any undue delay in providing access to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.” Such a ringing endorsement of a single medical product from a single pharmaceutical company gives the people cause to wonder. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Three)
Pfizer requested 75 years before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the documents it relied on to license its COVID vaccine. In 2021, the FDA requested 55 years to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency on the vaccine’s creation process. That would put the revelation in 2076, the 300th anniversary of the American founding, and hardly a model of disclosure. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Two)
In August 2021, Joe Biden proclaimed COVID “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” and his administration “involuntarily separated from service” nearly 8,000 military personnel who declined the vaccination. As those discharged might have noticed, the vaccine failed to prevent infection or transmission of COVID, as the fully boosted Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci confirmed by testing positive. So did the fully boosted Gavin Newsom in 2022, yet the governor still recommended vaccinations and boosters as “the best way to protect yourself from COVID-19.”
Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), recommended the vaccine for children, the least vulnerable group. The vaccines boosted Pfizer’s profits to a record $100 billion, including $57 billion driven by its vaccine and antiviral pill Paxlovid. As people of a certain age may remember, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin gave away their vaccines, effective against the scourge of polio. None of these realities found their way into the tri-state declaration. The alliance might boast more clout if Newsom had first released his 1,000-page report on his own pandemic performance. Some reviews are already in. (RELATED: Dr. Anthony Fauci: What Exactly Did Biden Pardon?)
As Luke Wake of the Pacific Legal Foundation explains, Newsom’s emergency order of March 2020 remained in effect into 2022, allowing him to wield unfettered power “without involving the legislature and without opportunity for public input.” Such a one-man rule is “anathematic to America’s free democratic system.” (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part One)
People may disagree on mask mandates, social distancing, and so forth, but “we should agree that such policy issues are to be decided by elected lawmakers in the legislature, those who represent the diverse interests of all Californians.” Alexandra Orbuch of the Princeton Legal Journal had similar concerns.
By his own account, through 71 executive orders, Newsom issued 561 proclamations related to COVID. After lifting more than 90 percent of his COVID executive orders, the governor did not terminate his emergency power at the “earliest possible moment.” As Orbuch noted, “checks and balances are a cornerstone of the American governmental structure” and prevent each branch “from overextending their authority.”
In April of 2020, Newsom announced the spending of $1 billion on masks with the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD), which makes motor vehicles, not protective medical equipment. The governor hid details of the deal even from fellow Democrats. Perhaps the lengthy report will explain what happened to the money. As Californians will recall, in November 2020, Newsom and colleagues partied sans masks at the upscale French Laundry, a clear violation of the governor’s own COVID protocols.
Newsom has strong ties to the Brown, Getty, and Pelosi families. When he announced the state of emergency, he proclaimed the state was “blessed” to have the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, then House Speaker. The governor’s recent claim that the Trump administration has “politicized” the CDC calls for another look back.
The federal government’s first spokesperson on the pandemic was Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). As the people should know, Dr. Messonnier is a member of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) tasked to prevent viruses from arriving on American soil. In early 2020, Dr. Messonnier delivered a series of press briefings about a “novel virus” from the “Wuhan market” that would spread across the country.
When reporters asked about individuals returning from Wuhan, Dr. Messonnier said that was “not something I’m at liberty to talk about today,” and did not reveal who was laying down the rules. That would seem to signal political control of the CDC.
Much more remains to be revealed than what Newsom did right or wrong, and his new pact with Oregon and Washington could have unintended consequences. Three states setting up their own health alliance could cause Americans to question the need for a federal CDC and push back against white coat supremacy in general. Let the debate begin.
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Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.