Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg to testify to Covid Oversight on school closures
Another member of the dark money Norfolk Group is - unsurprisingly - headed to Congress
Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg will be testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (HSSCP) today. This is not to be confused with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (HSSCC) chaired by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) which uncovered the Trump Administration’s unrelenting political interference in the coronavirus response. Today’s closely named HSSCP is simply the Republican House Representatives’ effort to continue the lies about Covid told by Trump, the GOP, and a handful of highly unethical U.S. licensed physicians starting in April 2020.
Chart Source: Exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy
The hearing will focus on the impact of school closures. As part of her announcement she amplified her Urgency of Normal and “Sensible” Medicine colleague and UCSF anti-mask oncologist Dr. Vinay Prasad. The Urgency of Normal can be understood as a kid-focused rebrand of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) and a second attempt at pushing their dangerous Covid minimization. The GBD was the deadly and heartless herd immunity via mass infection strategy authored in Great Barrington, MA by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), Dr. Martin Kulldorff (Harvard, on leave), and Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) tied to Koch dark money.
Ahead of her testimony, she received guidance from Brownstone Institute lawyer Laura Powell. The Brownstone Institute is the “spiritual child of the GBD” owned by Jeffrey Tucker and serves as a central hub for far-right political anti-science. In April 2022, Høeg and Powell testified together at the California Assembly Committee on Business and Professions in opposition to the Covid physician accountability law known by its bill name Assembly Bill 2098 (AB2098). Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) signing of this bill into law last fall, they have launched a legal crusade exposed to be further tied to Koch dark money.
Høeg has aligned herself deeply with the Koch-tied GBD/Brownstone Institute network. She is a member of the new “Norfolk Group” alongside GBD signers Bhattacharya and Kulldorff as well as Gov. Glen Youngkin’s (R-VA) Covid advisor Dr. Marty Makary who testified in the first HSSCP hearing.
Despite being a California resident, she has been serving as a remote “consultant” for the Florida Health Department and is a member of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) public health “integrity” committee with Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and Florida State Surgeon General and America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) founding member Dr. Joseph Ladapo.
This Florida committee was announced as Rep. Clyburn’s HSSCC drew to a close. HSSCC Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) voiced concern over this rogue Florida initiative at their final hearing. The December final HSSCC report names Ladapo’s AFLDS - after three key reports that called out Trump aligned politicians and physicians:
“The Atlas Dogma” about the spread of the GBD’s dangerous, debunked herd immunity strategy in the Trump White house
“A Knife Fight with the FDA: The Trump White House’s Relentless Attacks on FDA’s Coronavirus Response” over the pressure campaign to approve hydroxychloroquine for Covid - the debunked treatment promoted by AFLDS based of Dr. Didier Raoult’s studies facing criminal charges in France
“It Was Compromised: The Trump Administration’s Unprecedented Campaign to Control CDC and Politicize Public Health During the Coronavirus Crisis”, covered by Rachel Maddow
Ahead of the first HSSCP hearing the website of the HSSCC went down, though a back up exists here.
Like Høeg, Ladapo is a California export. He left UCLA for right-wing anti-vax politics with future insurrectionist AFLDS front woman Dr. Simone Gold. Pro-hydroxychloroquine, pro-Trump AFLDS was a creation of the Tea Party Patriots and the far-right Council for National Policy of which Charles Koch is a long-time ally and Gold is a new member. Upon relocating to Florida, Gold was issued a new medical license. The California Medical Board has finally, after over two years, called out Gold’s insurrection involvement as “unprofessional conduct”. She has yet to be called out by the CMB for her spread of Covid disinformation thanks to the lobbying efforts of people like Høeg. AFLDS is now facing a wrongful death lawsuit in Nevada.
In her capacity as a consultant for DeSantis’s Florida health department, Høeg has grossly misused her credentials to promote - and sometimes completely misinterpret - small, pre-print studies that then get sent up the ladder directly to Ladapo and state policy makers like DeSantis.
Høeg’s pre-print dumpster diving for the political agenda 2024 presidential hopeful DeSantis has aligned himself with has had a particular focus on myocarditis in children post-Covid vaccine.
As pediatric and adult congenital cardiologist Dr. Frank Han wrote, post-vaccine myocarditis is rare and “nearly uniformly a mild disease”. The risk has been grossly over-exaggerated by Høeg et al’s Covid era anti-vax movement to manufacture fear - which has gone viral.
While Høeg involves herself in an inter-state political Covid culture war, it is important to note the Great Barrington Declaration effort has been a global one. While her Norfolk Group colleague and Fox News/Wall Street Journal contributor Makary focused on the lab leak Covid origin theory in his testimony, the leaks they ought to be concerning themselves with are the Health and Advisory Recovery Team (HART) leaks out of the UK which involve their colleague McCullough, Steve Bannon, and former Cambridge Analytica lead psychologist Patrick Fagan. Months of leaked internal messages show exactly how schools were targeted in the origins of this political Covid disinformation campaign.
Despite right-wing efforts to minimize the impact on Covid and kids - including Makary’s testimony - the GBD has had devastating effects on children who have been used as pawns for this movement as they have been with DeSantis-style classroom culture wars.
Schools have been shown as a source of increased viral spread.
Failing to keep kids Covid safe has had devastating effects on education both here and in the UK.
The editor of the Lancet called out the blocking of accurate school data in the UK thanks to ideologue leadership. While the GBD has claimed they were “censored”, the complete opposite is true.
In the US, Covid school data work by Brown University’s Emily Oster has received funding from Bhattacharya’s old Stanford University friend and GOP mega donor Peter Thiel. She will almost definitely be cited tomorrow, as she was by Høeg’s Norfolk colleagues in the first hearing.
The Lancet went on to call out the Covid response as a “massive global failure” riddled with poor leadership and stalled by overwhelming misinformation.
The magnitude of this failure is only starting to reveal itself. What is clear is that bad actor adults used kids as pawns for their agenda to sow political unrest and the US GOP bears responsibility for this.
When Høeg and Powell testified against AB2098 in the California Assembly, a protestor called for Nuremberg 2.0 for pro-vax doctors - ie. tribunals and public hangings that followed WWII. Dr. Simone Gold once hired people to stalk, ambush, and film the president of the California Medical Board and used that footage to depict her as a Nazi. In countering their movement we have gotten almost numb to receiving noose pictures online. Meanwhile, Høeg colleague DeSantis has moved to ban history books that would teach our students about the dangers of their totalitarian methods. In allowing this cover-up effort to continue on and sow hate, we are teaching children that bullies with money win. That is incredibly dangerous.
While Powell brought a Bhattacharya-esque firebrand to both her testimony and a Brownstone Institute piece about the now-law titled “The Dystopian Vision of the Health-Information Police”, Høeg was an incredibly weak public speaker, her voice shaking throughout. Today she will be tasked with upholding a house of cards built on lies. If we want to move forward as a nation, the Democrats must step up and hold her - and her movement’s - feet to the fire. Enough is enough.