A 520-page report from the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, controlled by Republicans, was published on Monday. The report examined federal and state responses to the pandemic, as well as the origins of the virus and vaccination efforts.
A congressional panel made up of Republican lawmakers concluded its two-year investigation on Monday, December 2, supporting the theory that the COVID-19 virus likely leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
“This work will help the United States and the world to predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic,” said committee chairman Brad Wenstrup in a letter to Congress, as reported by CNN.
U.S. federal agencies, the World Health Organization, and scientists worldwide have come to different conclusions about the most likely origin of COVID-19, and no consensus has emerged. Most believe the virus spread from animals in China, but a U.S. intelligence analysis last year suggested that the virus could have been genetically engineered and escaped from a virology lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where human cases first emerged.
The congressional panel was convinced by the lab-leak theory after holding 25 meetings, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews, and reviewing over a million pages of documents. The investigation included two days of closed-door interviews with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government scientist who became the nation’s leading expert in the early chaotic days of the outbreak in 2020.
Fauci’s clashes with former and future President Donald Trump over the response fueled anger on the right, and he now lives under security protection due to death threats against his family. Republicans accuse the 83-year-old immunologist of helping to trigger the worst pandemic in a century by approving funding to Chinese scientists they accuse of producing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Operation Warp Speed: “An Extraordinary Success”
Among its key findings, the report stated that the National Institutes of Health had indeed funded controversial “gain-of-function” research — aimed at enhancing viruses to find ways to fight them — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci angrily denied covering up the origin of COVID-19 before the panel in June, arguing that it would have been “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied in the lab to turn into the virus that caused the pandemic. However, the panel’s report said that SARS-CoV-2 “likely emerged due to a lab accident or research-related incident.”
The investigation revealed that lockdowns “did more harm than good,” and that mask mandates were “ineffective in controlling the spread of COVID-19,” contradicting other studies that show mask-wearing in public reduces transmission rates. Social distancing guidelines were also criticized, though travel restrictions were considered to have saved lives.
The investigators found that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — the publicly funded project to develop COVID-19 vaccines — was an “extraordinary success,” but that school closures had a “lasting impact” on American children.
