COVID-19 likely emerged from lab and “the ‘science’ never justified the prolonged closing of schools,” bombshell report claims

The House's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released the defining report on the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's what it found.

The House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its long-awaited final report on Monday, almost five years after a man in Wuhan, China contracted the first confirmed case of COVID-19.

In a 525-page report, the committee’s Republicans, led by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), found that “a lab-related incident involving dangerous gain-of-function research in China is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,” “the ‘science’ never justified the prolonged closing of schools,” and “the Biden administration repeatedly obstructed [Congress’s] investigations.”

The committee has hosted some of the most high-profile hearings this Congress, featuring witnesses such as Anthony Fauci, who gave a made-for-TV hearing one member called “the most insane hearing that I have ever attended”; EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak, who was grilled by members from both parties over his controversial organization’s involvement in the origins of the coronavirus; and Great Barrington Declaration co-author Jay Bhattacharya and Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary, both of whom have since been tapped by President Donald Trump to serve in top public health roles in his administration.

Although the committee went through bouts, notably when it came to investigating EcoHealth Alliance, this week’s landmark report was authored by the committee’s Republicans. “EcoHealth Alliance Inc. — under the leadership of Dr. Peter Daszak — used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China,” the committee wrote. Democrats on the committee did release a separate report in which they faulted public officials liked disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) for their pandemic-era policies.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R., Iowa), a physician who served on the COVID Select Committee, told the Reporter that the “COVID report provided valuable nonpartisan info from Republican report that is actionable for next pandemic.” On the other hand, she noted, the “Democrats’ report was partisan.”

The Republicans, however, were far more extensive in their findings. “After the Select Subcommittee released evidence of EcoHealth violating the terms of its NIH grant, HHS commenced official debarment proceedings against and suspended all funding to EcoHealth,” which the committee revealed is also under investigation by the Department of Justice, they said in the report.

The report also laid out five reasons why the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China was likely the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Reasons include that “data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previously pandemics where there were multiple spillover events”; “the virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature”; “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels”; “Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market”; and that “by nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.”

During her time in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the first Trump administration, Bonnie Glick was the executive sponsor of the agency’s COVID-19 Task Force. She lauded the report’s release to the Washington Reporter, adding that “the COVID pandemic originated in the People’s Republic of China and was covered up for long enough to be unleashed on the world. It was hidden by Xi Jinping and his toadie, the WHO’s ‘Doctor’ Tedros, who is not an actual medical doctor, by the way.”

“When President Trump accurately called out the Chinese Communist Party for its massive cover up, he was roundly criticized by others around the world who were beholden to China while they privately asked America for help. But he was right, and this report proves it,” Glick said.

“I saw firsthand how China took credit as a savior for struggling countries in the developing world,” Glick said. “Chinese officials would arrive to great fanfare with PPE or vaccine shipments as well as with loans for struggling governments. But those loans and the communists’ largesse always came with strings attached. Sometimes this was in the form of long term leases for full-use ports, sometimes it was for votes in China’s favor at the U.N. There was always a condition attached to Chinese aid, even as China unleashed the pandemic upon the developed and developing worlds.”

As early as April, 2020, Glick cautioned that China was forcing countries such Italy to buy back PPE that they had donated to China, and sounded the alarm about CCP culpability in the virus’s origins. “They are the ones who infected all of us,” she told The Spectator. “They have a special responsibility to help because they are the ones who began the spread of the coronavirus and did not give the information required to the rest of the world to plan accordingly …It’s hard for the world to accept that even the information that they’re putting out now is accurate and acceptable from an epidemiological standpoint.”

“Even as the CCP held hostage most of the world’s supply of personally protective equipment (PPE), doctors and nurses in the U.S. had to reuse masks and gowns when caring for very sick patients across the country,” Glick told the Reporter.

Wenstrup’s report also levied criticism at disgraced Gov. Cuomo, who initially received an Emmy Award for his “masterful” COVID-19 briefings to the public. “Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s March 25 Order — which forced nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive patients — was medical malpractice,” the committee said. “Evidence suggests Mr. Cuomo knowingly and willfully made false statements to the Select Subcommittee on numerous occasions about material aspects of New York’s COVID-19 nursing home disaster and the ensuing cover-up. The Select Committee referred Mr. Cuomo to the Department of Justice for criminal prosection.”

“Andrew Cuomo did not merely resign,” said Kevin Byrne, who is now the county executive of Putnam County, and was in New York’s legislature at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when he pressed for impeachment hearings into Cuomo’s nursing home policies. “The people of New York and their representatives used their collective voices to force him out of office. He left in disgrace.”

“The truth is Andrew Cuomo was dishonest to New Yorkers about his COVID-19 orders and their impacts, particularly as it pertained to nursing homes,” Byrne said. “He retaliated against anyone who questioned him. He used government employees to attack grieving families seeking answers and had other government staff assist him in writing a self congratulatory book that lauded his disastrous pandemic response.”

While Cuomo was officially forced from office due to concerns about sexual harassment, many believe his exit was a fig leaf to exculpate other Democratic governors who followed his lead in “forc[ing] nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients as part of their pandemic response,” Rep. Steve Scalise and the COVID Select Committee noted in 2020.

“‘Me too’ may have been what brought him down, but it was clear to me that it was happening eventually regardless,” Byrne said. “I recognize that time can move fast, but we mustn’t forget how and why he left office. It would be a massive mistake to place the public’s trust in him again.”

Glick believes that Cuomo is responsible for “thousands of deaths.” She told the Reporter that “governors like Andrew Cuomo in New York forced nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients, a practice copied by many other Democrat governors, certainly leading to thousands of deaths.”

The report’s findings were also praised by government watchdog groups, who lauded the findings. Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), told the Reporter that “the subcommittee’s report confirms many of the suspicions PPT and others have shared that demonstrate how the public health bureaucracy squandered the trust of the American public.”

“From the lack of data supporting social distancing to the failure to track known vaccine side-effects, and so much else, science was not driving health officials’ decisions,” Chamberlain added. “Add to that the intentional efforts to keep information from the public and to avoid FOIA, and it’s clear that Americans’ grave concerns about so many aspects of the pandemic response are entirely justified.”

As the world reckons with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, experts like Glick are eager to see President Joe Biden replaced with Trump. Just this week, Biden called Fauci a “true hero.”

“Through it all, Trump focused on finding solutions to protect our population at home and on finding solutions for our allies around the world,” Glick told the Reporter. “During tumultuous times, which I think we can all agree Biden is leaving for Trump, it’s vital to have a steady hand at the wheel. He was steady in 2020 during the global pandemic and he will be steady again in 2025 as we right the ship.”