A kooky COVID hearing? Of course, it's happening in Arizona

We interrupt the state’s election denial crowd, still fuming at Kari Lake’s latest loss earlier this week, to move now to the state’s COVID-19 conspiracy crowd.

Yeah, I know. Why oh why, universe, is it always our beloved Arizona?

On Thursday and Friday, the Legislature will host a hearing to “examine federal, state and local efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Looking at the lineup of elected leaders and “expert panelists” — not to mention the cryptic callout to QAnon — I’m guessing this august study group won’t be examining the nexus between Arizona’s low vaccination rate and our highest-in-the-nation death rate. One that rivals Peru.

Committee is overseen by conspiracists

The five-member Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee is chaired by state Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise and a nurse who lost her job because she declined to be vaccinated.

“The people of Arizona deserve to know the details of exactly how the pandemic was mismanaged,” Shamp recently told The Arizona Republic’s Stephanie Innes.

Also on the committee:

Rep. Andy Biggs, who at the height of the pandemic decried masks as a form of tyranny and pushed hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug promoted early on by then-President Donald Trump as the elixir that would deliver us from the pandemic.

Rep. Paul Gosar, who promoted the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned it could cause severe illness. Ivermectin is used for treating parasitic worms, not viruses.

Rep. Eli Crane, who like his fellow far-right colleagues, wants to pull out of the World Health Organization and investigate Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who coordinated the country’s COVID-19 efforts.

A QAnon-friendly group gets a shoutout

The two-day hearing is being partially underwritten and heavily promoted by a QAnon-friendly group that is using the state-sponsored event as a shoutout to the crazies.

The Arizona Republic’s Ryan Randazzo reports that The America Project hijacked the committee’s acronym, NCSIC (Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee), turning it into NCSWIC (Novel Coronavirus South Western Intergovernmental Committee).

QAnon shotout?Acronym raises questions about COVID event

Even Shamp has promoted it as an NCSWIC event.For all you non-kooks — the ones who don’t believe Donald Trump is secretly battling a global cabal of Hollywood and liberal elites, all pedophiles who worship Satan and yes, run a child sex trafficking ring — NCSWIC is QAnon code.

It stands for “Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming” — a reference to their belief that Trump will destroy the Deep State.

The Q crowd must be in raptures at the state's nod to its beliefs.

But I digress.

'Experts' have dubious qualifications

The Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy offers a nice rundown of “expert panelists” who will speak at the hearing, which will be livestreamed to the masses from the Arizona state Capitol.They include:

• Dr. Peter McCullough, a Texas cardiologist who has made all manner of unsupported claims, including his belief that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous, that hydroxychloroquine is effective and that the pandemic was “planned”.
• Dr. George Fareed, who has promoted ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and other drugs that are popular in some right-wing circles but are not authorized by the FDA to treat COVID-19.
• Dr. Richard Urso, who is part of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), which pushed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and sold bogus COVID-19 treatments.
• Dr. Pierre Kory, who is president of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and has called ivermectin a “miracle drug”. Kory offers online consultations to patients suffering from long COVID, for the low, low price of $1,650, according to STAT, a publication covering the health industry.

If 'Contagion' character was real, he'd be here

You know who wasn’t invited by the state to testify about “federal, state and local efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic” in Arizona?

Will Humble.

He’s a former state health director and current executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association — a guy who frequently warned that the state wasn’t doing enough to prevent illness and death during the pandemic.

“I was just thinking this morning as I was cleaning the pool that some of the expert (panelists) remind me of the Jude Law character in ‘Contagion’,” Humble told me.

Hmmm. Law’s character is a conspiracy theorist who capitalizes on a deadly pandemic and uses social media to market a bogus cure. And becomes famous.

Of course, that sort of thing only happens in the movies.

But if he was real? Yeah, he’d fit right in at this official hearing sponsored by the state of Arizona.

Why, universe, is it always, always, always us?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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