A House panel’s two-year investigation on COVID-19 concluded that the virus accidently leaked from a lab in China, part of a wide-ranging report that chided the U.S. pandemic response as “deeply flawed” with “rampant fraud, waste and abuse.”
Members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said they hoped the 520-page review will “serve as a road map for Congress, the Executive Branch, and the private sector to prepare for and respond to future pandemics.”
The Republican-led panel reported that COVID-19 “most likely emerged” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, citing biological characteristics of the virus and illnesses among researchers at the facility in fall 2019, weeks before the disease began spreading globally.
The origins of the virus remain unsettled science, with many researchers still favoring the theory of animal-to-human transmission, likely at a wet market in Wuhan.
“When it came from to the nature versus lab argument, there was far more forensics on the lab side,” subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Congress.
According to the report, the response included mitigation failures such as lockdowns, including school closures. The report also criticized masking, six-foot social distancing and vaccine mandates.
The panel praised some efforts, including the quick development of COVID-19 tests and travel restrictions that at least delayed the disease’s spread into the U.S. At the time, critics of the travel restrictions, enacted by then-President Donald Trump, said they were xenophobic.
The investigation also applauded Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, a public-private approach that rapidly developed vaccines that “undoubtedly saved millions of lives.” At the same time, the committee noted the vaccines did not stop virus transmission, as promised by government officials.
According to the report, the lockdowns that restricted the movement of people and closed schools and businesses, caused “more harm than good” to the economy, the mental and physician health of citizens, and the education and social development of children.
Masking was cited as “ineffective” at controlling the spread of the virus, and social distancing guidelines were criticized as not “supported by science,” and for being “forcefully implemented by state and local governments” and causing “strife amongst Americans.”
The report said six-foot distancing was not supported by science, something later admitted to by Dr. Anthony during testimony.
As the pandemic spread, Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the face of public information regarding COVID. The House panel criticized Fauci for attempting to push a narrative that COVID-19 originated in animals.
The report also blasted EcoHealth Alliance, a nongovernment organization that used NIAID grants to collaborate with Wuhan scientists on “dangerous gain-of-function” experiments to modify coronaviruses.
The panel faulted the National Institutes of Health for “deficient, unreliable” oversight of the research. The NIAID is part of the NIH.
Among Wenstrup’s conclusions to Congress was that EcoHealth Alliance should never again receive U.S. funding.
The report also said public health officials often spread misinformation through conflicting messaging, kneejerk reactions and a lack of transparency. The report noted that “off-label drug use and the lab leak theory were unjustly demonized by the federal government.”
A result was a “distrust in leadership,” Wenstrup’s letter said.
“Trust is earned. Accountability, transparency, honesty and integrity will regain this trust," he wrote. "A future pandemic requires a whole of America response managed by those without personal benefit or bias. We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must. It can be done.”
Democrats on the panel pushed back on many of the panel's conclusions. Their spokesperson said the probe reflected “two years wasted on political stunts instead of preventing and preparing for the next pandemic.”
“Select Subcommittee Republicans prioritized extreme probes that vilified our nation’s scientists and public health officials in an effort to whitewash former President Trump’s disastrous COVID-19 response,” the spokesperson said.
During the probel, the subcommittee sent more than 100 investigative letters, conducted more than 30 transcribed interviews and depositions, held 25 hearings and meetings, and reviewed more than 1 million pages of documents.
The report, released Monday, is titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.”
