Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin announces medical advisory team, chaired by Dr. Marty Makary

On Tuesday, incoming Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced the makeup of his Medical Advisory Team, which will be led by Dr. Marty Makary.

"I am proud to announce a group of experts from the medical and public health community that will be providing updates on the pandemic and advice on how to address its ongoing challenges," wrote Youngkin in a press release.

Serving alongside Makary will be Nancy Agee, Kathy Gorman, Alan Levine, Dr. Bogdan Neughebaeur, and Anand Shah.

"I have been receiving briefings about the coronavirus and Omicron variant regularly and we are going to stay on top of this. I recognize the severity of the virus and the significant loss that it has caused. Virginians should rest assured that we are monitoring this variant and doing everything we can to be smart about this. I will enter office ready to reopen Virginia, support our healthcare heroes, and protect the lives and livelihoods of Virginians,” Youngkin continued.

"Dr. Marty Makary is a surgical oncologist and chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center. He is a clinical lead for the Johns Hopkins Sibley Innovation Hub and serves as Executive Director of Improving Wisely, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project to lower health care costs in the U.S. by creating measures of appropriateness in health care," Youngkin’s press release stated.

Makary serves jointly as a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of health policy & management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The doctor also serves as a Fox News contributor, and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.

Ahead of a Senate hearing in which Dr. Anthony Fauci and & CDC Director Dr. Walensky testified, Makary appeared on Fox News, criticizing the quality of data used to inform public policy decision.

"But one criticism that's going to come out loud and clear is that the quality of the data has been particularly poor. That is, we have not had good data to inform public policy. This is their job. They have 21,000 employees and over $10 billion in funding at the CDC. Lawmakers have a right to be upset. They're are also going to challenge them on natural immunity being completely ignored, which is ruining careers of people who have it," said Makary.

"And they're probably going to talk about the lack of discussion around therapeutics. We've never once heard any of them, Fauci, Walensky, talk about fluvoxamine or some of the other therapeutics out there," he continued.

Makary also talked about boosters, and the American public's lack of appetite to receive repeated boosters every few months.

"Well, look, I don't think the public has an appetite for boosters every week or every three months is really what you would need to do to maintain those high antibody levels. They've not been talking about T cell and B cell immunity, it's lasting, it's protective. And sure, you can get what we've tragically called a breakthrough infection. It's really just the normal virus landing in somebody's nasal system and you test positive, but you're still protected with the vaccine," Makary said.

"Now, the CDC has made a move to basically tell their own experts, their ACIP Advisory Committee, 'we're not going to be using you much in the future. We met 24 times last year,' they told them 'next year, it'll probably be a few days, we're gonna make most of the decisions internally.' That's a step backwards for transparency. Because we don't have the public discussion that's telecast. And we don't have that expert input in the decision making. That's why many people are upset about boosters and teenagers, they bypass the experts at the FDA to get that through," said Makary.