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After a two-year investigation, Congress released its final report last week on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting critical failures which “caused more harm than good” to the American people.

Authored by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee On Oversight and Accountability’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the 520-page report is titled, “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.” According to the Subcommittee, the report aims to serve as a “road map for Congress, the Executive Branch, and the private sector” to better prepare and protect the nation regarding future crises. The report’s data and findings are the result of more than 100 investigative letters, 30 transcribed interviews and depositions, 25 hearings and meetings, and a review of more than one million pages of documents.

The report’s numerous key findings show that U.S. agencies and the World Health Organization (WHO) enabled a litany of false narratives throughout the pandemic that led to deeply misguided response measures not rooted in science. First and foremost, the Subcommittee deals with the COVID-19 virus’ potential origin and suggests it “likely” originated from a lab leak at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Secondly, the report indicates widespread measures by the WHO to “cover-up facts” and illustrates “unconstitutional methods” by the Biden administration to censor dissenting views on pandemic response measures. Additionally, the report states that shot mandates, lockdowns, and social distancing were not based on sound science and, therefore, did more harm than good inflicting long-lasting collateral damage on society, including economic strain, distrust of public health, mental health crises, and loss of certain free speech liberties.

COVID-19 Virus “Likely” Man Made

From the beginning of the pandemic, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, attributed the COVID-19 virus as the result of a “zoonotic spillover,” – something transferred from an animal to a human – possibly a bat. However, according to the report, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the lead agency over Fauci, used American taxpayer dollars to fund a study of coronaviruses from bats as well as gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute. Fauci then “played semantics” with the definition of gain-of-function research during his May 2021 U.S. Senate testimony denying that type of research was taking place at the Wuhan Institute.

Yet, the Subcommittee noted evidence that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute became sick in Autumn 2019 with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 just before the first identified case of the pandemic. Supporting the idea of a man-made virus, scientists have noted the wildlife trade in Wuhan has missing evidence of infected animals, so the “outbreak at the Wuhan market probably happened after the virus had already been circulating in humans.” Last March, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Robert Redfield, testified before Congress that the virus was more likely the result of an “accidental lab leak than the result of a natural spillover event.”

The report concluded that the lab-leak theory was “incorrectly characterized as a ‘conspiracy theory’” and that the virus likely emerged from a laboratory accident.

Cover-Up and Censorship

The congressional report suggests that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the WHO, and the U.S. government deliberately “sought to cover-up facts” about the pandemic’s origins.

The Subcommittee criticizes the CCP for a lack of transparency and violating numerous international Health Regulations (IHRs). They allege that China’s suppression of early outbreak data delayed global response efforts. Regarding the WHO, the Subcommittee accuses it of protecting China’s political interests over international health.

“The WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an abject failure,” stated the report. During the pandemic, the report notes, the WHO relied on false information from China and repeatedly “shielded the CCP from accountability.” After ignoring warnings about the virus from Taiwan in late December 2019, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus falsely stated the first report of COVID-19 came “from Wuhan, from China itself.” The WHO then propagated China’s preliminary investigation results that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus in Wuhan. However, the report notes that the “investigations” included the CCP “jailing any doctor that disseminated any information about COVID-19 that was not first cleared through state-run media.”

The report states that “the WHO made an affirmative decision to shield the CCP from accountability,” and that Dr. Tedros even praised the CCP’s “transparency” despite the regime’s consistent underreporting of its actual infection and death statistics. The Subcommittee argued the WHO’s pandemic response calls into question the proposed “Pandemic Treaty,” which is a WHO-led effort to gain international authority during future health crises. Because the WHO “caved” to pressure from the CCP at the expense of its health duties, the report states the “Pandemic Treaty” could “affirmatively harm the United States.”

As for the Biden administration, the report’s findings show officials hindered scientific debate by pressuring social media platforms to suppress certain viewpoints as “misinformation.” According to congressional testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the White House pressured Facebook to censor the lab-leak theory, content claiming COVID-19 was “man-made,” content critical of vaccine safety, efficacy, mandates, masks, and lockdowns, and debate over alternative treatments. The report characterizes these actions as a breach of First Amendment rights and asserts that the government overstepped its bounds by influencing private companies to restrict speech.

“The Constitution cannot be suspended in times of crisis and restrictions on freedoms sow distrust in public health,” the report stated.

Unscientific Pandemic Response

The report largely denounced the vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and social distancing as “unscientific,” considering the scientific data available at the time. The report suggests that these unscientific responses caused “more harm than good” and are responsible for extensive collateral damage.

The Subcommittee noted that “the prescription cannot be worse than the disease.” Yet, the pandemic response was characterized as so “coercive” and “counterproductive” that it:

  • “Forced millions of people to choose between their livelihoods and being vaccinated—even if they had closely held personal or religious beliefs or a medical reason.”
  • Was “the primary cause” of permanent business closures where nearly 100,000 businesses never reopened after the pandemic.
  • “…hollowed out our healthcare and education workforces” resulting in “crisis-level shortages.”
  • “…reduced our military readiness and recruitment” by discharging more than 8,000 members and contributing to recruiting shortfalls of 25 percent.
  • “Interfered in the patient-physician relationship” by applying “a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine” that left no “decision-space” for doctors to individually treat patients.
  • “Reduced trust in public health” by levying arbitrary social distancing guidelines, and overstating the vaccine’s safety and ability to prevent infection and transmission.
  • “Deepened political divisions” with statements like “the pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
  • Increased rates of psychological distress among children, including anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems by “isolating students from their peers, restrict[ing] sports and other extracurricular activities, [which] led to excessive screen time.”
  • Resulted in severe student learning losses where test scores of high school graduates have dropped to new lows not seen in decades.

The Subcommittee concluded that future pandemic responses must prioritize clear, scientific communication from front-line doctors treating patients to prevent these policy missteps from happening again.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “This congressional report only confirms what we knew from the beginning of the COVID crisis. It is no surprise that the government’s response inflicted devasting collateral damage on the nation. Common sense tells us that shot mandates, lockdowns, lack of transparency, and censorship had nothing to do with science or health, but had everything to do with control. The federal agencies that are supposed to be the watchdog to protect the people became the lap dog for Big Pharma that harmed the people. We must never allow this again.”

Author: Liberty Counsel

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