Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Issues Final Report: ‘Likely Emerged’ From Wuhan Lab

LESLIE EASTMAN DEC 3, 2024 9:00 AM

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic first convened in February 2023, about three years after the country became aware of the spread of the novel coronavirus that eventually morphed into the endemic coronavirus we have today.

Now, as President-Elect Donald Trump prepares to return to Washington, D.C., with an entirely new administration filled with members who are “expert-skeptical,” the subcommittee has released a 520-page final report that slams nearly every aspect of the pandemic response and criticizes the scientists and organizations apparently responsible for the origins of the virus.

The document is available online (click HERE). The group also published a summary of the low lights, starting with their conclusion that the pandemic began as a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (as I had theorized back in February 2020).

COVID ORIGIN: The SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The five strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include:

1. The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
2. Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
3. Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
4. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.
5. By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.

The report targeted the World Health Organization (WHO) as well, asserting its response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a complete failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties.  The subcommittee warned that, based on this incident, the WHO’s proposed “Pandemic Treaty” may harm our nation should our country ever sign onto it.

Then, the subcommittee examined the response developed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and all the other public health officials who were cited to support the preferred pandemic narratives.

• Social distancing: The “6 feet apart” recommendation was arbitrary and not based on science.
• Mask mandates: There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from covid.
• Lockdowns: Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy, but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on children and teens.
• Long-term impacts: School closures resulted in significant learning loss for children and increased mental health concerns.
• Government response: The report criticized various aspects of the federal and state governments’ handling of the pandemic, including relief fund oversight and vaccine mandates..

The report also blasted the Biden administration’s Health and Human Services department, which engaged in a multi-year campaign of “delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness” in an attempt to obstruct the investigation and hide evidence that could incriminate or embarrass senior public health officials. The analysis suggests that HHS intentionally under-resourced its component that responds to legislative oversight requests.

The subcommittee’s review took EcoHealth Alliance and its president, Peter Daszak, to task for a wide range of obstruction and failures:

• EcoHealth Alliance used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
• EcoHealth violated NIH grant terms by failing to report a potentially dangerous gain-of-function experiment conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
•  Daszak obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation by providing publicly available information, instructing his staff to reduce the scope and pace of productions, and doctoring documents before releasing them to the public.
• Daszak provided false statements to Congress.

The report indicates that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into EcoHealth’s pandemic-era activities. With Team Trump poised to take over the DOJ, that research organization will receive intense scrutiny.

Finally, the report reviewed the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in this fiasco, concluding the NIH’s procedures for “funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security“. The subcommittee concluded that the NIH fostered an environment that promoted evading federal record keeping laws.

You can be sure Trump’s new NIH head, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (a Stanford physician and economist who challenged the lockdown policies directly) will be reviewing the findings and conclusions with great interest, along with all the others tasked by Trump with to “restore trust” American public health system.

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