House COVID-19 Origin Hearing: Science Points to a Wuhan Lab Leak

The science points to a Wuhan lab leak: That was the takeaway from expert witness testimony at the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s hearing Wednesday, March 8. From the very outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, speculation regarding the origin of the virus settled on two primary options. It either made the jump from a bat to a human because of exposure at a wet market in Wuhan, or it came from the virology lab in the city. Public health officials, politicians, and the left-leaning big-box media all quickly latched onto the first, dismissing the second as a conspiracy theory.

But the lab leak argument was compelling even then. And as more information becomes available, the aggressively guarded official narrative seems less likely. In the face of mounting evidence, even those officials and agencies most entrenched in the narrative are forced to accept the possibility they were wrong.

In Pursuit of the COVID-19 Origin

Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) began the hearing with how important it is to predicting and preventing future pandemics in generations to come that we discover the genesis of the virus, whatever that may be. He pledged the Select Subcommittee would “thoroughly, responsibly, and honestly” investigate the origin of COVID-19.

“If we do not get to the bottom of what went wrong with the COVID-19 pandemic, if we fail in our efforts to fearlessly understand all shortcomings and shore up the vulnerabilities this crisis has so clearly exposed,” Dr. Jamie Metzl, Ph.D., senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, implored, “the victims of the next pandemic, our children and grandchildren, will ask us why we failed to protect when we knew what was at stake and had the chance.”

Though he admitted as he prepared to leave his government job that the lab leak theory wasn’t impossible, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former chief medical advisor to the president and director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has taken a firm stand on the virus’ natural origin. All throughout the pandemic, Americans were told to trust the experts – but what is one to do when there are equally credentialed experts backing multiple “truths” that contradict each other?

No Conspiracy Theory After All

Despite Fauci’s prior certainty on the matter, Guardian reporter Jimmy Tobias’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed there were plenty of red flags that should have led him and other officials to at least entertain the possibility. The good doctor, however, may have ignored and even suppressed evidence that didn’t line up with his official narrative. Dr. Robert Redfield, former director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), claimed he was excluded from calls related to the origins of the pandemic after urging Fauci to investigate the possibilities. “It was told to me that they wanted a single narrative and that I obviously had a different point of view,” he explained.

Nicholas Wade – former editor for Science and Nature and former science and health editor for The New York Times, who testified as an expert witness at Wednesday’s hearing – argued that Dr. Fauci had also used unverified data to dismiss the lab leak theory.

Dr. Metzl testified how China’s government destroyed samples, hid records, imprisoned Chinese journalists, prevented Chinese scientists from saying or writing anything on pandemic origins without government approval, actively spread misinformation, and prevented any real investigation from taking place.

Dr. Redfield also testified to suspicious behavior from the Chinese. “It’s now declassified now, but in September 2019, three things happened in that lab,” he explained. “One, they deleted the sequences. That is highly irregular – researchers don’t usually like to do that. Second, they commanded the command and control of the lab from civilian control to military control. Highly unusual. And the third thing they did, which I think is really telling, is they let a contractor re-do the ventilation system in that laboratory. There is strong evidence there was a significant event in that laboratory in September 2019.”

Only one of four witnesses – Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Professor and former Infectious Diseases Society of America President Paul Auwaerter – said the evidence seemed to lead to a natural origin for COVID-19, but even he had to admit the lab leak was possible. When asked if the possibility of a lab leak was a conspiracy theory, the answer was uniform across the board: “no.”

As Liberty Nation’s Dave Patterson explained just days ago, even the administration, which once actively suppressed the lab leak origin story as misinformation, now accepts it. The Department of Energy (DOE) and The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence both came to the conclusion that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely began with a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Afterward, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that the Bureau also believed the lab leak explanation. Not all conspiracy theories, it seems, are false.