The COVID-19 pandemic, which began under former President Donald Trump and continued under the Biden administration, changed the way the world and the U.S. functioned for a few years.
In its aftermath, House Republicans initiated an inquiry into how the pandemic was managed by the government. Did the school closures make sense? Was social distancing backed by science? Where did COVID-19 come from?
The House Oversight Committee concluded its two-year investigation into the response to the pandemic and released a 520-page final report on Monday providing their answers to these questions and others.
This report provides “a road map of how we, in Congress, the Executive, and the private sector may better prepare for and respond to future pandemics,” subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Congress. His panel “sent more than 100 investigative letters, conducted 38 transcribed interviews or depositions, held 25 hearings or meetings, and reviewed more than one million pages of documents” for the report.
“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,” Wenstrup wrote.
Sen. Mike Lee also reacted to the report, saying, “The progressive era in American government must now come to an end.”
“We have met our enemy And it’s our own government,” he added.
Here are three highlights from the extensive report.
The report asserts that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. It argues the virus possessed mutations that aren’t naturally found, and unlike previous pandemics that spread through multiple spillover events, COVID-19’s introduction stems from a singular event. Wuhan is also home to a virology institute that conducted gain-of-function research with lower biosafety requirements than recommended.
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology reportedly experienced COVID-19 symptoms months before the virus spread in the wet market.
The theory that COVID-19 has natural origins became popular after Nature Medicine published a study in March 2020, saying with certainty: “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” Public health officials and the media pointed to this report and discredited the idea the virus originated from a lab.
The committee’s report argues that Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led the U.S. pandemic response, was behind the push to discredit the possibility of an artificial origin. The Wuhan lab received $1.4 million from the National Institutes of Health.
While Congress was busy investigating the virus’ origins, the American public had already made up its mind. When asked what theory they support, 69% of American voters said SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab, while only 31% said it emerged naturally, according to a Deseret News/HarrisX poll from March.
The report states that social distancing rules, mask mandates and prolonged lockdowns were not based in science, spiking distrust in the government and distressing the economy.
“During closed-door testimony, Dr. Fauci testified that the guidance, ‘sort of just appeared,’” a press release from the House oversight committee said about the social distancing rules that recommended people stay six feet apart. The report also found that President-elect Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, which were labeled xenophobic at the time, helped save lives, and Fauci agreed.
School closures led to learning loss and a higher number of mental health issues among children and teenagers. After the Biden administration worked closely with the American Federation of Teachers, a left-leaning teacher’s union, education institutions remained closed for longer than necessary, the report says.
The report praised Trump’s Operation Warp Speed which authorized the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. But the vaccines were not effective at stopping the spread of the virus, pointing to the Biden White House pushing for a rushed approval of the vaccines. The vaccines were credited with reducing the lethality of the virus.
The report argued that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates were harmful because they “trampled individual freedoms, harmed military readiness, and disregarded medical freedom to force a novel vaccine on millions of Americans without sufficient evidence to support their policy decisions,” according to the Oversight committee’s press release. These mandates ignored the science behind natural immunity acquired from a previous COVID-19 infection.
