‘What Not To Do’: Final House Report Finds Gov Misled Public About COVID

House lawmakers released their final comprehensive report on COVID on Monday detailing how government officials misled the public about the origins of the pandemic. 

The 520-page report from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic covered everything from school closures to gain-of-function research to Anthony Fauci’s leadership of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The release of the report comes after the committee spent two years conducting over 30 transcribed interviews and depositions, holding 25 hearings and meetings, and going over over one million pages of documents. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a distrust in leadership. Trust is earned,” Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) wrote in a letter accompanying the report. “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. We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must. It can be done.”

One of the key findings of the report was that COVID likely originated and leaked out of a lab, a view that was once banned by Facebook but now echoed by Senate Republicans and the Department of Energy. The report said that COVID “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident.”

The report noted that public officials from both China and the United States tried to hide facts that might confirm the lab leak theory. “The Chinese government, agencies within the U.S. Government, and some members of the international scientific community sought to cover-up facts concerning the origins of the pandemic,” the report said. 

For example, the lawmakers said that Fauci prompted the writing of an academic paper to undermine the lab leak theory in early 2020. The paper, known as “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” argued that it was not plausible for the virus to come from a lab. 

The lawmakers further concluded that the NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to the report, this research was facilitated by the EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak, who the government moved to bar from future federal funding earlier this year. 

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The report accused former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of “medical malpractice,” saying that he acted to publicly cover “up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.”  The panel previously made a criminal referral against Cuomo for allegedly lying about his knowledge of a report that was used to defend a New York policy that placed COVID patients in nursing homes.

Additionally, the report was critical of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, which was later struck down by the Supreme Court. The lawmakers wrote that the government was currently failing “to efficiently, fairly, and transparently adjudicate claims for the COVID-19 vaccine injured.”

Other findings of the report were that lockdowns of schools caused significant learning challenges for children and that pandemic aid was plagued by fraud and waste. Wenstrup wrote that the lockdowns were overly strict and broad and caused “predictable anguish and avoidable consequences.”

“Just a few short years ago, arguing that COVID came from a Chinese lab and that lockdowns & authoritarian measures didn’t work would get you censored and kicked from social media,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said of the report. “This report will stand as a warning for future generations of what NOT to do.”