Donald Trump has been moving briskly through his Cabinet picks, with the Attorney General position being the only one thus far that has been changed.

Now, the president-elect has announced his choice for Surgeon General, and it is raising some eyebrows for those who remember COVID policy. Dr. Janette Nesheiwat is Donald Trump’s choice.

I am deeply honored and humbled by this nomination to serve as Surgeon General of the United States. Thank you, Mr. President, for your trust. I pledge to work tirelessly to promote health, inspire hope, and serve our nation with dedication and compassion @realDonaldTrump #MAHA pic.twitter.com/anKuzkYNcz

— Dr Janette Nesheiwat (@DoctorJanette) November 23, 2024

She comes with a long resume, and on the surface, this choice seems a popular one.

Nesheiwat is a Fox News medical contributor and serves as a medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.

“Dr. Nesheiwat is a fierce advocate and strong communicator for preventive medicine and public health,” Trump said in a statement. “She is committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, quality healthcare, and believes in empowering individuals to take charge of their health to live longer, healthier lives.”

Nesheiwat, who specialized in emergency and family medicine, has supported vaccines that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for HHS secretary, has cast doubts about.

But she at times seemed to criticize the CDC’s guidance about Covid vaccines, saying earlier this year that for many Americans, especially young people, the vaccine’s risks would outweigh the benefits — while acknowledging that risk is small for the majority of patients. Nesheiwat has been critical of government mandates through the pandemic.

She has also called into question the standards of care for youth with gender dysphoria from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Insert joke here about Trump picking a Fox News contributor for Surgeon General. However, Dr. Nesheiwat’s opinions during the COVID pandemic are bringing up concerns, especially regarding kids and masking.

We were warned this was coming by @NicoleShanahan pic.twitter.com/GWUIZINrj7

— Scarlett Johnson (@scarlett4kids) November 23, 2024

That… doesn’t seem to align with “criticizing” the CDC recommendations on masking and vaccination. While Dr. Nesheiwat was saying that kids needed to go back to school (for fall of 2021), she was apparently very much on board with masking. And pushing vaccination. This all seemed to be occuring around the “Delta” variant emergence, and each new variant that was named seemed to cause inordinate amounts of panic in the medical community, with the cure always being the same – masks and vaccines.

In retrospect, Delta was quickly supplanted by Omicron, and Omicron ended up being the last major variant of the pandemic (thanks to its weakened strain and high transmissibility, which spread quickly but had all the symptoms of a low-grade flu or bad cold). But during that period of time, Dr. Nesheiwat was definitely pushing the CDC’s priorities of masking – even double masking, just like Anthony Fauci! – and vaccination.

And some of the worst people from the pandemic are praising Dr. Nesheiwat as a great choice for Surgeon General.

Peter “Many Thanks” Hotez says that Janette Nesheiwat is a great nominee for Surgeon General.

The people who fought to lock you in your homes are thrilled. pic.twitter.com/Q7j8S3tEvr

— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) November 23, 2024

I don’t doubt that Dr. Nesheiwat is an excellent doctor, and on paper, looks good for Surgeon General. However, COVID was not that long ago, and people should have long memories when it comes to the public health policy that was forced on all of us four years ago. While some of what happened early on can be excused with lack of specific knowledge and panic regarding the unknown, it is now clear that those who considered themselves “the science” and our intellectual betters were pulling public health policy and recommendations straight out of their asses, which they expected us to kiss.

Surgeon General is a Senate-confirmed position, and so Dr. Nesheiwat will need to sit in front of a confirmation hearing. In order to be confirmed, Dr. Nesheiwat needs to explain herself, fully and completely, about why she publicly pushed masking and vaccination. And someone like Senator Rand Paul should be doing the questioning. This is not something that she, or any other contender for the role of Surgeon General, should be able to avoid discussing – especially when it comes to her own statements regarding Facebook censoring anti-vaccine information. While she specifically cites a measles outbreak here, encouraging censorship by a social media platform is a HUGE red flag.

Trump's pick for Surgeon General, Janette Nesheiwat, praised Facebook for censoring anti-vaccine information, adding that she will "hope and pray" other social media companies do the same. pic.twitter.com/Zqpz6ktLWs

— TechJudge (@techjudge) November 23, 2024

If you are asking for confirmation to a prominent role in United States public health, then you have to be able to explain why you supported “the current thing” even though it ended up being the wrong thing. I hope that Dr. Nesheiwat can hold her own in a Senate confirmation hearing, especially when confronted with her own words. If she can’t, then she doesn’t deserve to be confirmed as Surgeon General.

Featured image: flag of the Surgeon General of the United States via the Institute of Heraldry on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, public domain