Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), isn’t off the hook regarding COVID just yet.
According to Fox News, Republicans are vowing to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic should they win back the House later this year.
The outlet further reports that, as part of this investigation, Republicans are planning to use all of Congress’s investigative powers. This includes the power to subpoena witnesses and the power to hold hearings.
“No stone unturned”
Fox News, for its report, quoted two House Republicans, one of whom is Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“House Republicans on Energy and Commerce are determined to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19, and we will leave no stone unturned,” McMorris recently said. “For every American who lost a loved one to COVID, every nurse and first responder who worked night and day to fight COVID and keep us safe, and every child who has faced a mental health emergency due to school closures and lockdowns, they deserve answers.”
The outlet also quoted Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee.
“When Republicans are in power in 2023, we will use every tool at our disposal to get answers for the American people and hold accountable those who have shielded the truth,” he said.
Background
The two competing theories for the origin of the coronavirus are the natural origin theory and the lab leak theory. The former posits that the coronavirus pandemic began after an animal naturally passed it onto a human, whereas the latter argues that the pandemic began after the coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute Virology, a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
When Comer said that Republicans will “hold accountable those who have shielded the truth,” he, no doubt, was targeting people such as Fauci as well as former National Institute of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins.
Recently, emails were released that show that Fauci and Collins worked to squash the lab leak theory during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. They did so after a group of scientists raised concerns with them that the coronavirus might not be natural.
There have also been many questions raised about the fact that the U.S. government, specifically Fauci’s and Collins’s agencies, through EcoHealth Alliance, appear to have been funding, with taxpayer money, controversial gain-of-function research on coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This suggests that Fauci and Collins know a lot more than they have claimed.
Despite all of the questions raised by such information as this, though, House Democrats have refused to look into the pandemic origins. Republicans, on the other hand, are promising to do just that should they retake Congress, which means that Fauci, Collins, and others aren’t off the hook just yet.
