By BILL KING
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recently issued its final After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is an exhaustive 557-page document covering almost every aspect of the pandemic. I could not find any record of the official vote of the subcommittee on the issuance of the report, but based on public comments by the members, it was likely approved along party lines. The report, unfortunately, was written from a distinctly partisan viewpoint, which will undermine its value. However, once you set aside the gratuitous partisan grandstanding, the report has a great deal of important information.
Here are some of the key takeaways.
Origin of Covid: Almost since Covid first appeared, a debate has raged about whether the virus’s emergence was zoonotic (transferred from an animal to a human) or whether it was the result of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The subcommittee concluded that “the weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis.” If anything, I would say that is an understatement.
The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the zoonotic emergence supposedly occurred, is about seven miles from the WIV. For a coronavirus to have naturally evolved within seven miles of a lab working on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses would be one of the most remarkable coincidences of all time.
The subcommittee also amassed an impressive body of evidence that some officials and researchers attempted to discredit the lab leak theory out of fear of political blowback on the federal government’s involvement in funding GOF research. The report describes how the World Health Organization downplayed the possibility of lab leaks because of international political considerations, highlighting a structural shortcoming that affects that agency’s efficacy.
The report also highlights the difficulty in regulating this extremely hazardous type of research. Both the Trump and Biden administrations tightened rules on GOF research, but it is very difficult for laypeople to know whether enough has been done. One clear conclusion from this episode is that we cannot rely on the research community to regulate itself.
Suppression Tactics: The report argues that most of the non-medical suppression efforts, principally masks, social distancing, and lockdowns, had, at best, a limited impact on the spread of the virus and probably did more harm than good. It also suggests that public health officials had little scientific data to back up their guidance concerning their non-medical suppression efforts.
I mostly agree with the report’s conclusions in this area. However, the report suggests there was a sinister aspect to these recommendations, or that they were, at least, the result of bureaucratic hubris. I disagree with that take. I think public health officials were overwhelmed with the potential magnitude of the pandemic, and at the time, they were still uncertain about the virus’s lethality. However, I agree that the public health establishment and other groups, especially the teachers’ unions, clung to these strategies long after it was clear that their efficacy was minimal.
Vaccines: The subcommittee lauded the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed for the unprecedented speed in spurring Covid vaccine development. However, it pushed back against vaccine mandates, citing that the data never showed the vaccines would suppress transmission. It noted the toll the mandates took on the military and healthcare workforces at a critical time.
Vaccine mandates are a complicated and nuanced issue. Some vaccines are referred to as sterilizing vaccines, which completely block transmission. The two most notable are the polio and measles vaccines. There is a strong case for mandates of sterilizing vaccines because they protect society at large.
But it was clear early on that the Covid vaccines were not blocking transmission and there was little indication in the trials that they would. Therefore, the case for mandating the vaccines was always thin. (Healthcare workers seemed to me to be a special case because of their unique exposure to the virus and proximity to patients, many of whom were particularly vulnerable to it.)
The report throws a bone to those who have argued that the Covid vaccines had widespread adverse effects by noting the large number of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and calling for those to be more thoroughly investigated. However, the report also points out the difficulty in discerning correlation from causation with regard to adverse effects. Reading that section, I got the impression the authors were struggling to mollify many in the Republican base who believe the vaccines were/are dangerous.
Oversight of Financial Aid: I suspect few will be surprised that the subcommittee found evidence of widespread fraud in the use of the various aid programs the federal government rolled out to dampen the financial impact of Covid. Something I had not heard before was that there was a significant transnational, organized crime component to the fraudulent use of the aid. I recently talked to an FBI agent who told me his office was overwhelmed with Covid aid fraud referrals.
Discounting Natural Immunity: The report discussed that the public health establishment largely discounted natural immunity to Covid. I agree with that observation. I think the motivation was to encourage people not to rely on natural immunity and to get the vaccine.
Loss of Institutional Credibility: The downplaying of natural immunity was one of several examples of the public health establishment being less than candid with the American people. I believe those who engaged in this dissembling did so with good intentions. They believed, I think correctly, that the more Americans who were vaccinated, the lower the ultimate death toll would be. Therefore, they believed they were justified in minimizing the importance of natural immunity to encourage people not to rely on it.
But the public health establishment’s dissembling did tremendous damage to its credibility and turbocharged anti-vax sentiment. More damage was done as it clung to suppression efforts when it was increasingly obvious to the public that they were not effective and were causing significant hardships for the American people. This loss of credibility by the public health establishment may have repercussions that reverberate long after the effects of the pandemic are gone and may make our ability to respond to the next one even more challenging.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
On January 9, 2017, just 11 days before Trump took office, the Obama Administration lifted the ban on gain of function research. A coincidence?
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Or, the Obama, Hillary Clinton, Democrat plot to destroy Trump, and develop a sinister plot to cause sickness throughout the world. A vast Democrat get-even conspiracy? Think about it.
Lies and lack of sound science allowed the approval of the eua shots.
Science needs to follow the evidence wherever it leads on the effects of the mrna and the contaminated shots.
The national health agencies are compromised and have shown that they cannot be trusted in a honest review of the covid shot.
Nobody is going to jail or be held responsible after spending taxpayer dollars on a please the sheep investigation.
Like everything that this administration has done to the people and country nobody is held accountable like they have went after the j6 crowd.
We need more than an investigation that tells us what we already knew.
I think a few people are going to disappear mark.
My own experience with the covid vaccine is that it made me very, very sick with RSV-like symptoms within a month or two of receiving the “booster” shot. I never tested covid positive with the test kits.
That sickness lasted about 2 months in both cases, and it was nothing at all like I’ve ever had before. The simple fact that after getting the covid vaccine, one had to sit for 15 minutes to see if there were any after-effects says it all.
I will never get another covid shot or any vaccine pushed by the government, ever.
Here’s what it tells us.
The human population as a whole is easily manipulated, especially by fear.
Absolutely correct CBM
Correlation and causation…funny how in my tiny community and within my immediate family and friends nobody died from the dreaded Covid but we saw an abnormal spike in sudden deaths among the vaxxed but not among the unvaxxed. And the deaths were from stroke, heart attack and turbo cancers…just like the conspiracy theorists are saying happens from the vax. At some point correlation proves causation and it’s likely that we passed that point a while ago but for our rulers to admit that would expose their culpability and their liability. So they gaslight us with things like correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation…but, in this case, we all know it does.
Same observation from my view in Palmer. Lots of heart attacks, cancers, strokes, blood clots people I personally know that were definitely vaccinated. I don’t know 1 person who died of Covid.
Implementation of the government’s internationally coordinated COVID response was merely a mass population control drill; nothing more, nothing less. It is just one mechanism by which global tyranny will be secured. End the UN, and with it the WHO.
Tell me I am glad to be a pureblood.
For me, at this point where every human on this earth has been affected by this plandemic, the origins are almost a nothing burger. Every person/organization that supported the spread and the lies needs to be held accountable. Here in Alaska, let’s start with Dr. Zink, Elizabeth Ripely and Governor Dunleavy.
I agree Ginny
In other words, the world was duped by the US Government Health Officials (both Federal and State),
the Politicians, the News Media, the Doctors, the Vaccine Manufacturers, the Military, All of the Businesses and Employers that mandated compliance to enter or keep jobs. But we shouldn’t be upset, it’s only resulted mass death around the world, a massive global financial crisis, a lifetime of diseases for the people that took the jab (which feeds the medical machine), and the total lack of trust in the vaccines industry and the medical profession. No Problem-Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen and proceed- SURE WE WILL!
It is accurate to say that the Covid crisis started with a LIE – that the virus originated in nature – and things went downhill from there. From the first indications that a virus was spreading, Dr. Fauci had a decent idea of the lab origins yet he downplayed the possibility. Drs. Fauci and Collins KNEW the natural origin story was probably a LIE but they doubled-down and added more policies based on falsehoods. They lacked the integrity to reverse course. The damage from the lies and falsehoods runs to many tens of trillions of dollars if it were to be measured that way. Creating the Covid 19 virus in a lab is the crime of the century.
A crime against humanity that should end with death sentences for all involved.
Nothing in the report about the creepy lizard people at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (no really) or how they somehow knew about all of this months, if not years ahead of time? The whole thing was a psy-op, no doubt the largest in history. “But all those doctors say…”. Literally half the doctors on this planet will tell you with a straight face that men can become women and women can become men. Are you going to believe them? Virology itself is based on lies. It is pseudo-science. There was no Covid and there were no Covid deaths.
It was all a lie.
Fort Detrick flu.
“It is accurate to say that the Covid crisis started with a LIE” There you go, JMARK just identified the root of this global tragedy. We are either searching for the truth, or we are searching for results. And the search for the truth will always impede the path of man’s ambitions on the way to results we want. I have no idea if I will live to see the day justice is served on those who engineered all of this, but I know judgement will eventually come
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