The coronavirus that killed millions of people “most likely” leaked from a Chinese lab where researchers were intentionally manipulating the virus, a two-year congressional investigation concluded Monday.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic faulted U.S. health officials — and Dr. Anthony Fauci in particular — for discrediting the lab-leak explanation and instead pushing the theory that the virus originated in nature.
But that explanation doesn’t fit the facts, said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the subcommittee chairman who said the timing of the virus, unexplained illnesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and certain “biological characteristics” of the virus all argue heavily for a manmade crisis.
The panel, in its 557-page report, chided the American government at all levels for flubbing the response to the pandemic, saying the 6-foot social distancing rule was invented without a basis in science, mask mandates don’t appear to have mattered, and sweeping lockdowns slammed the economy and spawned mental health problems for many Americans.
“The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a distrust in leadership,” said Mr. Wenstrup, Ohio Republican. “Trust is earned. Accountability, transparency, honesty, and integrity will regain this trust. A future pandemic requires a whole of America response managed by those without personal benefit or bias.”
The report, which will be due for a vote in the subcommittee later this week, comes roughly five years after the first coronavirus cases were detected in China.
The first U.S. case was reported Jan. 20, 2020. President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13 and three days later launched his 15 days to slow the spread.
That turned into lockdowns that shut schools and offices for months. It also spawned mask mandates and a rush to develop treatments and vaccines. That, in turn, spawned a new layer of vaccine mandates, all of which proved deeply divisive.
Experts have debated how much those efforts worked, with the virus evolving and deaths increasing in waves over the ensuing years.
As of this week, some 7 million global deaths have been attributed to the virus, with 1.2 million of those in the U.S.
Mr. Wenstrup and his investigators assert strenuously that the heavy-handed approach failed, and led to some of the distrust of government, broader vaccine skepticism and political polarization that has emerged in the past several years.
“The job of public health officials is to offer the best scientific advice to protect the nation as a whole. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, many public health leaders narrowly focused on one mission, to the detriment of others, including the trust of the public,” the report concluded.
The subcommittee said U.S. officials also gave short shrift to natural immunity conferred by having contracted COVID-19, in favor of boosting the vaccines.
The report challenges much of the conventional wisdom that pervaded official pronouncements and media coverage, egged on by what the committee said was government censorship of alternate views expressed on social media.
“It was evident from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that public health leadership had little interest in engaging in any form of alternative debate,” the report said.
Those major officials also were quick to mock the Chinese lab leak theory about the virus’s origin.
Those backing the idea that the virus leapt from an animal host to humans said they didn’t believe a lab leak was possible.
Led by Dr. Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, they sought to discredit the lab-leak explanation and complained they were “conspiracy” theories. Media outlets and self-proclaimed fact-check organizations took up the mantra.
But the subcommittee offered five explanations for why the lab leak theory looks “most likely.”
They include the fact that all COVID-19 cases trace back to a single moment of introduction in humans, the history of the Wuhan lab, the scientists’ unexplained illnesses in the fall of 2019 and, despite five years of searching, the lack of a candidate for natural origin.
On school closures, the subcommittee said labor unions for teachers wielded outsized influence on government recommendations to keep schools shuttered.
That included regular back-channel calls between the American Federation of Teachers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and AFT urging its members to consider going on strike if they felt reopenings were being rushed.
“AFT relied more on ’politics’ than ’science,’” the committee report concluded.
AFT, in a lengthy response to the report, said Mr. Wenstrup had become “fixated on the idea that the AFT had uncommon access and inappropriate influence.”
“Its work on this issue is a colossal missed opportunity,” AFT said.
Mr. Wenstrup’s report also dinged the U.S. response to counter the shutdowns by dumping taxpayer money into the economy.
With few guardrails, fraudsters feasted on unemployment and small business assistance programs, stealing hundreds of billions of dollars.
By some estimates, more than half of that money flowed to fraudsters abroad, including criminal syndicates backed by U.S. adversaries in Russia and China.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.