Congressional probe determines COVID-19 ‘most likely’ leaked from Chinese lab

The coronavirus that has killed millions of people worldwide “most likely” leaked from a Chinese lab where researchers were intentionally manipulating the virus, a two-year congressional investigation concluded in a report released Monday.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic faulted U.S. health officials, particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci, for discrediting the lab leak explanation and instead pushing the theory that the virus originated in nature.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and subcommittee chairman, said that explanation doesn’t fit the facts. The timing of the virus, unexplained illnesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the virus’ specific “biological characteristics” argue heavily for a man-made crisis.

In its 557-page report, the panel chided the U.S. government at all levels for botched responses to the health emergency. It said the 6-foot social distancing rule was devised without a scientific basis, 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,” Mr. Wenstrup said. “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, due for a vote in the subcommittee later this week, was released roughly five years after the first COVID-19 cases were detected in China.

The first U.S. case was reported on Jan. 20, 2020. President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13 and launched his 15-day initiative three days later 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, 1.2 million of them in the U.S., have been attributed to the virus.

Mr. Wenstrup and his investigators assert that the heavy-handed approach failed and led to a distrust of the government, broader vaccine skepticism and political polarization.

“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 ignored natural immunity conferred by contracting COVID-19 in favor of vaccination.

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 officials also were quick to mock the Chinese lab leak theory about the virus’ origin.

Those backing the idea that the virus leaped 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 as a conspiracy theory. Media outlets and self-proclaimed fact-check organizations adopted this mantra.

The subcommittee offered five explanations for why the lab leak theory looks “most likely.”

One is that all COVID-19 cases can be traced to a single moment of introduction in humans. Others include the history of the Wuhan lab, the scientists’ unexplained illnesses in the fall of 2019 and the lack of a candidate for natural origin despite five years of searching.

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 rushed.

“AFT relied more on ‘politics’ than ‘science,’” the committee concluded.

In a lengthy response to the report, AFT 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.