{"id":10950,"date":"2024-12-05T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=10950"},"modified":"2024-12-04T09:00:19","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T14:00:19","slug":"congressional-probe-determines-covid-19-most-likely-leaked-from-chinese-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=10950","title":{"rendered":"Congressional probe determines COVID-19 \u2018most likely\u2019 leaked from Chinese lab"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Stephen Dinan\u00a0–\u00a0The Washington Times\u00a0–\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coronavirus that has killed millions of people worldwide \u201cmost likely\u201d leaked from a Chinese lab where researchers were intentionally manipulating the virus, a two-year congressional investigation concluded in a report released Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Brad Wenstrup<\/a>, Ohio Republican and subcommittee chairman, said that explanation doesn\u2019t fit the facts. The timing of the virus, unexplained illnesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the virus\u2019 specific \u201cbiological characteristics\u201d argue heavily for a man-made crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019t appear to have mattered, and sweeping lockdowns slammed the economy and spawned mental health problems for many Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a distrust in leadership,\u201d Mr. Wenstrup<\/a> said. \u201cTrust 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report, due for a vote in the subcommittee<\/a> later this week, was released roughly five years after the first COVID-19 cases were detected in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts have debated how much those efforts worked, with the virus evolving and deaths increasing in waves over the ensuing years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of this week, some 7 million global deaths, 1.2 million of them in the U.S., have been attributed to the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u201cThe 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,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subcommittee<\/a> said U.S. officials also ignored natural immunity conferred by contracting COVID-19 in favor of vaccination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those officials also were quick to mock the Chinese lab leak theory about the virus\u2019 origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those backing the idea that the virus leaped from an animal host to humans said they didn\u2019t believe a lab leak was possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subcommittee<\/a> offered five explanations for why the lab leak theory looks \u201cmost likely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019 unexplained illnesses in the fall of 2019 and the lack of a candidate for natural origin despite five years of searching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On school closures, the subcommittee<\/a> said labor unions for teachers wielded outsized influence on government recommendations to keep schools shuttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAFT relied more on \u2018politics\u2019 than \u2018science,\u2019\u201d the committee concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a lengthy response to the report, AFT said Mr. Wenstrup<\/a> had become \u201cfixated on the idea that the AFT had uncommon access and inappropriate influence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIts work on this issue is a colossal missed opportunity,\u201d AFT said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Wenstrup\u2019s report also dinged the U.S. response to counter the shutdowns by dumping taxpayer money into the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With few guardrails, fraudsters feasted on unemployment and small-business assistance programs, stealing hundreds of billions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Stephen Dinan\u00a0–\u00a0The Washington Times\u00a0–\u00a0 The coronavirus that has killed millions of people worldwide \u201cmost likely\u201d leaked from a Chinese lab where researchers were intentionally manipulating the virus, a two-year congressional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[836,272,890,651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-immune-system","category-lab-leak","category-natural-immunity-immune-system","category-wuhan-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10953,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions\/10953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}