As America approaches the three-year anniversary of its first COVID-19 lockdowns, virtually all pertinent questions pertaining to the pandemic remain matters of significant contention.

Look no further than the first meeting of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which took place in late February. Republicans and their chosen witnesses, including prominent COVID-19 policy critics such as Stanford University epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya , Harvard University epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff , and Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary , focused largely on the damage wrought by lockdowns.

Democrats emphasized the threat of misinformation and the dangers of noncompliance with public health policy. They turned to American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges C. Benjamin to defend the establishment pandemic response — a response Kulldorff described as "a house of cards that’s now falling apart, one by one."

Both sides also engaged in a proxy debate over coronavirus vaccines and whether there was an "overwhelming consensus" on matters including mask-wearing and vaccines — or whether that consensus was manufactured.

Robert Garcia, the former Democratic mayor of Long Beach, California, credited the coronavirus vaccines for his city’s ability to reopen schools. Makary, when questioned by Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) regarding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation of coronavirus vaccines for children, said, "The CDC and FDA and people at the NIH made up their mind before the [vaccine] trials were completed. They decided babies were going to get vaccines before the study was done, and when it came out, it found no statistically significant difference in efficacy between the two groups [of those who received the vaccine versus those who did not], and they just authorized it anyway."

Bhattacharya, responding to questions from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), explained how he believed he was put on a social media blacklist because his ideas "shattered the idea there was actually a scientific consensus" regarding lockdowns, school closures, and "a whole host of policies that have done tremendous damage" because "scientific bureaucrats did not want that idea that there were people, reasonable people on the outside, that disagreed with them."

For much of the country, this whole affair likely comes off as little more than political theater, giving politicians the opportunity to grandstand and defend the past actions of their respective parties. To a large extent, they may be correct. However, a natural corollary to many of the questions raised in the meeting is how we should respond if there is another pandemic similar to COVID-19. Do we once more turn to lockdowns, masks, and rushed vaccines on the assumption these measures worked the last time? Or do we reject them because they failed miserably while resulting in significant harm to our society?

As Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, Makary, and several colleagues made clear in a document released earlier this year, the latter would seem to be the wiser choice, although then the task would be persuading the other side.

Given the divisiveness of the issue, this may seem unlikely on any large scale. But at least the questions are being asked in Congress.

Daniel Nuccio is a doctoral student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.