Gavin’s Angels: From Masks to Mandates to Millions

To fill “the vacuum left by the Trump administration’s systematic retreat from science and evidence-based public health,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom is creating the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange (PHNIX) which is “expected to bring together the best science, the best tools, and the best minds to advance public health. By bringing on expert scientific leaders to partner in this launch, we’re strengthening collaboration and laying the groundwork for a modern public health infrastructure that will offer trust and stability in scientific data not just across California, but nationally and globally.”

To lead PHNIX, the California governor has tapped Dr. Susan Monarez, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control, along with former CDC chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry and Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, founder and CEO of Your Local Epidemiologist. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed Monarez and Houry, but as Katy Grimes of the California Globe, explains, there’s more about them that people should know.

It was the fired CDC officials “who created the mandates which forced Americans to take the Covid vaccine, wear face masks indoors and outdoors, socially distance six feet from any other human in a public place.” Gov. Newsom was on board from the start. In April 2020, Newsom spent nearly $1 billion on masks with the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD), a motor vehicle company which at the time did not make protective equipment.

Gov. Newsom issued  draconian rules for gatherings and told people, “don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites.” That same governor partied sans mask at the upscale French Laundry in Napa. As Dr. Anthony Fauci confirmed, there is “no scientific evidence” for masking children. The six-foot social distancing rule “sort of just appeared,” and was not based on any data. The vaccines Dr. Fauci recommended failed to prevent infection or transmission of COVID, which the fully boosted Dr. Fauci confirmed by testing positive.

Like Fauci, Dr. Monarez was a big supporter of masks, social distancing, and the government-mandated vaccines. In September, Sen. Rand Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-up, raised the subject with Dr. Monarez. Paul, a medical doctor, made it clear that it was not about all vaccines, only the ones the CDC mandated for Covid.

“What is the science in favor of giving the vaccine to a 6-month-old, and what are the benefits from that?” Paul asked Monarez, “And then what would the risks of that vaccine be? We have large population studies of the risks of the vaccine in younger people.” Monarez replied, “that assertion is not commensurate with the experience that I had with the individuals who were identified to be fired.”

Paul also wanted to know “what is the medical, scientific reason and proof for giving a newborn a Hepatitis-B vaccine if the mom is Hep-B negative?” When Monarez failed to provide a direct answer, Paul countered that the burden of proof was on her to prove that the vaccines for infants were helpful. The Food and Drug Administration has some doubts.

In early December, the FDA considered a black-box warning on Covid-19 vaccines, the FDA’s strongest safety warning, before opting out of the plan. None of that prevented Gov. Newsom from selecting Monarez and Houry to head PHNIX, which he expects to have national and global reach. Parents, patients, and taxpayers should see the governor’s new bureaucracy as part of the state’s reactionary tradition.

The administration of George W. Bush opposed embryonic stem cell research. In 2004, real estate tycoon Robert Klein responded with Proposition 71, the Stem Cell Research Initiative. The measure promised life-saving cures and therapies for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases through embryonic stem cell research. Actor Michael J. Fox said in an ad: “71 will support research to find cures for diseases that affect millions of people, including cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The $3 billion measure created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), installing Klein as chairman. In 2012, the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, found that almost all CIRM board members were “interested parties with a personal or financial stake in the allocation of CIRM fundings.” As the investigators learned, CIRM was directing a full 91 percent of its research funding to institutions with representatives on its governing board.

Klein proclaimed that the life-saving cures would generate a steady stream of royalties that would make CIRM self-supporting. As it happened CIRM reported no royalties until 2018, and only in the amount of $190,345.87. In 2024 Klein wanted another $5 billion from taxpayers, and CIRM has yet to release any of the life-saving cures and therapies promised in 2004. PHNIX follows the same reactionary pattern.

“It’s not a shadow CDC we’re creating,” claims Gov. Newsom, “but it’s a shield to what’s going on.” The project does shape up as part the shadow CDC that Gov. Newsom is already in the process of creating. If Californians thought PHNIX will become another CIRM—the California Institute for the Redistribution of Money—it would be hard to blame them.