"Queen of the Vaccine" Dies Unexpectedly

The public health leader was just 36 years old. She traveled by plane the day before her death.

Another “sudden and unexpected death.”

Dr. SarahBeth Hartlage was an anesthesiologist turned city public health official who called herself the “Queen of the Vaccine.” In 2020, she became the Associate Medical Director for Louisville Metro Public Health and Wellness and was called the “face” of the local “LouVax” mass vaccination tool. From Healthcare IT News, in an article titled How pilots, bartenders and retired nurses helped one city boost vaccine access:

In January 2021, the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness went live with LouVax, a system for vaccine scheduling and management that's focused on increasing access to COVID-19 vaccines.  

After operating on paper for a few weeks, the agency launched the tool. The initial focus was on specific groups, such as healthcare workers outside of hospital systems and educators, but expanded later to the general public with an emphasis on those facing barriers to care.  

"For us, the user experience was twofold," explained Dr. SarahBeth Hartlage, the department's interim medical director. 

"Patients were able to access scheduling, demographic info, screening and consent documentation prior to arrival," she told Healthcare IT News. 

Hartlage was a passionate advocate for vaccine access and “health equity.”

She also bought the vaccine apologetics hook, link, and sinker.

Here she is last year trying to reassure people after the CDC investigated “more than a dozen cases of rare blood clots”:

She said: “I understand how scary these types of reactions can seem for people, but I want to emphasize that this is a great example of the scientific process working exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

I’m not trying to be mean. But Hartlage was 35 when that video was filmed, and she looked 50. She did not look well.

On March 16, 2022, she died unexpectedly. From her obituary:

While she had battled health issues over the last several years, her passing was sudden and unexpected.

About a week before her passing, on March 8, 2022, she was quoted in USA Today in an article about public health mask guidance in Kentucky:

Dr. SarahBeth Hartlage, associate medical director of the Louisville health department, said some people may want to continue to wear masks in public, especially as the community remains in the "yellow" category of medium risk.

"Anyone, regardless of risk factors, can still choose to wear a mask," she said at a news briefing Tuesday. "Folks who are at high risk are still urged to mask regardless of their vaccination status."

I tried to find some information on what exactly caused her death, but that’s not being made public. There are a few clues, however.

One of her very last tweets was about an emergency she had to deal with on a plane flight:

Shoutout to the NICU doc who joined me in responding to a mid-flight emergency this morning! Starting an IV @ 35k ft, crouching in an aisle -complete with turbulence -was a new experience! Resources mid-air are very limited, and we were very glad to be met by EMS on the ground!

Gee, what are we more at risk for when we ride on airplanes?

Could it be…blood clots?

Here’s another clue: Hartlage’s daughter apparently had a congenital heart condition, which means it was probably genetic.

¹

We don’t know if she got it from her mom or dad. But Hartlage may have had a similar condition (though it was not mentioned in the media).

Hartlage was also apparently “immunocompromised” - though, these days, that term is thrown around a lot

²

…

I keep my cool in public but lose it in private. Being expected to follow - and defend - ill conceived guidance is almost too much. As a public health doc, as a mom, as an immunocompromised person, as a human. No matter which of my roles, it rubs me the wrong way.

What’s ridiculous in all this is that we already know that people who are “immunocompromised” do not respond well (if at all) to covid vaccines, meaning, they don’t produce enough antibodies and the vaccines may be relatively worthless for these folks.

So here we have a woman who should have been in the prime of her life but was suffering from some sort of condition that left her immunocompromised, either through the disease itself or the medication she was taking. She may have also had a propensity to heart issues (we don’t know). She was clearly overweight, either through poor food choices or possibly a thyroid issue.

She’s a prime candidate for the covid vaccines simply “tipping you over the edge” and making all that stuff not just worse, but in this case, fatal. We’ll never know for sure, but I’d wager if the vaccine wasn’t the direct cause, at best it did not help her, and possibly made her condition a bit worse.

She was worried about the wrong thing!

As evidenced by some of her twitter comments, Hartlage was obsessed with covid case numbers, and apparently got herself worked up into a frenzy about it. Before doing more independent research (and let’s remember, she’s an anesthesiologist, not a clinician), she rushes to get a new vaccine technology in hopes it would save her life.

A year or so later, she’s dead at 36.

This is a tragedy.

Unfortunately, Hartlage’s time spent as a public health official seemed to involve tweeting and retweeting a lot of mainstream talking points about health…and about all the “current things.” You can read some of her choice Twitter comments at CovidVaccineInjuries.com - it’s got all the usual pro-vaccine tripe, including the requisite swipe at “horse paste.”

Before I continue…I don’t think it’s right to go post hateful comments on her Twitter account. This was a well-meaning but extremely misguided woman who believed too much in science, that it would save her…and now her precious child will grow up without a mom.

But it goes to show how our public health system is apparently run by well-meaning but poorly informed people who perhaps are driven by their own health demons.

People who are desperate to have science save them.

I get health desperation, I really do. I have it myself, since I can’t seem to fully cure whatever it is that’s been plaguing me the past 5 years.

I have a lot of compassion for this woman.

But she possibly did a lot of damage to people with her vaccine proselytization - and very possibly her own sick 6-year-old child, who Hartlage got vaccinated as soon as it was available for kids.

And it all appears to have been driven by a fear of covid…and for what?

Hartlage did everything “right,” and she’s dead now.

When it’s your time to go, you’re going to go.

No vaccine can save you from that.

But if you’re lacking a strong spiritual connection…you are much more likely to put your faith in the false god of science.

Use science when it makes sense. But don’t put your “faith” in it. There’s one thing you can count on in life, which is death. Get right with that, get right with God, and be at peace with what is inevitable.

Follow me on GETTR @stephaniebrail.

1. If you want to learn more about Hartlage’s child, here’s the website for the charity Hartlage set up for the Children’s Hospital Foundation because of her child’s congenital heart issues:

http://www.iheartcamille.com/

The story of her child’s journey makes everything that much more heartbreaking…but as much as Western medicine saved the kid’s life, I’m also bothered to see the kid at her “healthiest” has to be on 10 prescriptions with multiple medications every 6 hours. There has to be a better way. But this also shows where Hartlage’s covid paranoia was probably coming from.

2. Being “immunocompromised” itself is not a disease per se. It can be as a result of medications used to suppress the immune system, which are sometimes used in autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. Chemo can also make you immunocompromised. So does HIV.

(And yes, I know about the speculation regarding VAIDS or “vaccine AIDS” but I’m assuming here she was already “immunocompromised” prior to taking the covid shots.)