Lawmakers and Scientists Call for More Answers After House Hearing on COVID Origin

Following Wednesday’s meeting, both medical and law experts called for more investigation into COVID-19’s origins. hearing of the House Select Subcommittee for the Coronavirus Pandemic.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, ex-director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Jamie Metzl (senior fellow at Atlantic Council), Nicholas Wade, author and journalist, and Dr. Paul Auwaerter (professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) shared their analysis of competing theories regarding whether COVID-19 is the result of a natural epidemic or a laboratory accident.

Redfield described the theory of a lab leak as “the”. more likely scenario. Auwaerter testified The U.S. government agencies that they have tested with “low” To “moderate” It is believed that COVID-19 was caused by a lab failure. “many virologists believe compelling evidence points to an animal origin,” And said “making claims that cannot be supported sufficiently by available data fuels confusion and mistrust.”

Some witnesses specifically criticised initial efforts to locate the virus’ source and the Chinese regime for limiting access to the investigation.

Rep. Ami Bera (D.Calif.), said that regardless of where COVID-19 originated, China is using its moves to hide information from investigators “makes it more suspicious, potentially, for a lab leak.”

“The lack of transparency, the lack of, from day one, allowing the world’s best scientists to get into the hot zone, to understand what was going on, probably has prevented us from getting control of this pandemic much faster,” Bera said NTD.

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R. Arizona) stated that while the witness testimony provided valuable information and new details, she was still pondering China’s role in the viral outbreak.

“There’s still questions and there will be questions because China covered it up,” Lesko told NTD.

Early ‘False Consensus’ on COVID Origin

Metzl has described He described himself as a progressive Democrat, and said that the first efforts to find the source of COVID-19 had not been successful. He testified The subcommittee was informed that the 2021 World Health Organization effort would be undertaken to examine the outbreak. “was a disaster.” Metzl observed that two out of four weeks during their international WHO visit, a quarantine team was used by the research team. “had very limited access to raw data and was not even allowed unrestricted access to their Chinese counterparts.”

Metzl stated to NTD, that NTD was able to agree on a preferred narrative by the Chinese regime that attributed the viral outbreak to animal interactions and not negligent experimentation.

“Unfortunately, in my view, a false consensus was essentially pushed on the general public in the early days, and that stuck, and it took a whole lot of work of a small handful of people, certainly over the course of that first year, but really for three years to begin to shift perceptions,” Metzl said. “And now I think people are much more open-minded about the two real possibilities, and we heard that here. There was 100 percent consensus of all of the Congress people that a lab origin is a very real possibility.”

Metzl testified at the hearing that even though China supports natural COVID-19 outbreaks, it has not yet been able to identify the animal which may have served as an intermediary host. Metzl pointed out that researchers have been able to quickly find intermediate hosts in other virus outbreaks such as SARS in China in 2002 and MERS in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

“The Chinese government has actually been very aggressive in trying to find that kind of intermediary host animal,” Metzl testified. “They’ve sequenced about 100,000 animals. They haven’t found anything.”

Metzl explained to NTD that the reason why so many people rejected lab leak theory for the animal-to–human transmission theory is because it was not true. “many people had invested decades of their lives into building these kinds of scientific collaborations with China and other countries.”

EcoHealth Alliance President, Dr. Peter Daszak, personally emailed Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci in April 2020. thank him For publicly opposing lab leak theory. The EcoHealth Alliance is closely associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Lesko said, “There are questions revolving Dr. Fauci’s involvement with trying to promote just one thesis” About the origins of COVID-19.

“It’s very unlikely that [COVID-19] escaped from a wet market, a bat, whatever their excuse was at first,” NTD was informed by Rep. Brian Babin, a Republican from Texas. Although he isn’t on the House Select Subcommittee for the Coronavirus Pandemic, he serves on the House GOP Doctors Caucus. “And then we saw the administration, CDC, many others, Big Tech, try to shut down any kind of dialogue, any kind of discussion on where this thing emanated from.”

Babin also challenged the consensus around the closing of schools, masking COVID-19 to stop the spread and efficacy COVID-19 vaccines.

Bipartisan Answers

There is bipartisan support for the calls for information regarding COVID-19’s origins. The Senate met last week. voted Unanimity voted in favor of a bill that would declassify all COVID-19 information to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Rep. Jim Himes, (D-Conn.), will be speaking this week. backed A similar Republican-led House bill was introduced to allow declassification of intelligence regarding the possible lab leak.

“The international global health community should speak with one voice, that ‘Let’s actually just get to the facts and understand this,'” Bera said NTD. “This isn’t about pointing blame. This is about understanding how this virus started, and what we can do to prevent it in the future.”

Joe Biden was President in May 2021 tasked U.S. intelligence to review its conclusions on possible COVID-19 origins, and any intelligence support for the leak theory.

“I appreciate the Biden administration’s continued efforts to continue to look for data but unless we’re able to get into the hot zone, get into China—we may never discover it because if they destroyed data, then you know, they’re obviously hiding something,” Bera said.

Starting at NTD News