Anthony Fauci departs congressional hearing on 3 June. Photo: Francis Chung/Poltico via AP
Dear Commons Community,
A 15-month, often partisan congressional inquiry into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic reached a climax this week when Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), sat for 3.5 hours of questioning before a House of Representatives panel. Although the packed 3 June hearing included fiery—and sometimes outlandish—rhetoric from the panel’s lawmakers, it shed no new light on the pandemic’s origin and instead probed allegations of wrongdoing by Fauci and other federal officials.
Much of the hearing focused on events early in the pandemic that made Fauci, tapped by former President Donald Trump to help lead the federal response, a polarizing figure. Fans of the 83-year-old scientist labeled him as the voice of scientific reason. But critics blamed him, as well as officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for what they considered overly restrictive COVID-19 policies that led to the closing of schools and workplaces.
Republicans on the panel pressed that attack. “You oversaw one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the U.S. has ever seen,” said Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), chair of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “You took the position that you presented ‘the science’; your words came across … as final and as infallible in matters pertaining to the pandemic.”
Other Republicans accused Fauci of a wide range of misdeeds linked to the debate over the origin of the pandemic. They charged him with protecting a nonprofit group suspected of mishandling a grant that funded virus research in China, colluding with researchers who published a high-profile paper arguing the pandemic virus was not engineered by scientists, and turning a blind eye to a staffer who used a private email account to hide his communications from the public.
Democrats rushed to defend the record of the longtime adviser to presidents, who retired in 2022. “Under the guise of investigating the pandemic’s origins, House Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to objectively examine how COVID-19 came to be, and instead weaponized concerns about a lab-related origin to fuel sentiment against our nation’s scientists and public health officials for partisan gain,” said Representative Raul Ruiz (CA), the panel’s ranking Democrat.
For his part, Fauci—a veteran of numerous appearances before Congress—held his ground, assailing accusations made against him as “seriously distorted,” “absolutely false,” and “simply preposterous.” He noted that COVID-19 policy decisions made early in the pandemic were not entirely his. In a January interview with staff from the House panel he had said the early government guidance that people stay 2 meters apart “sort of just appeared.” Fauci said he meant that there had been no scientific study of distancing. He also said the policy—which was later dropped—had originated with CDC. Fauci noted that, at the time, scientific understanding of how to combat SARS-CoV-2 was a “moving target.”
Fauci also denied that he tried to protect or help conservation biologist Peter Daszak and his nonprofit group, the EcoHealth Alliance. In April 2020, Trump moved to kill a NIAID grant to the group after claims that the work it funded in Wuhan, China, led to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Fauci said he questioned the legality of that decision, which was later deemed improper. But he said he agrees with last month’s move by federal health officials to suspend—and seek a longer ban on—federal funding for Eco-Health because of its alleged violations of National Institutes of Health rules.
Fauci pushed back on suggestions he had any role in writing the now-famous Nature Medicine correspondence, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” that argued against the virus being created in a lab. Although he thinks the evidence supports a natural origin, Fauci testified that “I have always said … I keep an open mind” about the possibility of a lab leak. He also noted he and his family have received—and still do—death threats from those who believe Fauci created the pandemic virus or covered up its origins.
In his written testimony, Fauci distanced himself from an adviser, David Morens, who used personal email to communicate with Daszak and others about EcoHealth’s troubles in a bid to evade public records laws. Fauci said Morens helped him write papers and had no role in policy. Morens’s attempts to avoid public records laws were “an aberrancy and an outlier,” he said, and his efforts to help Daszak, an old friend, were “inappropriate.” Fauci denied conducting official business through personal email, as Morens had claimed in one email to Daszak.
Rep. Wenstrup concluded that he hoped the United States will be prepared for the next pandemic. “What should have been a 9/11 moment for this country … turned into a political nightmare. We need to do better,” he said. He told Fauci he was open to “more off the record conversations about things we can do in the future,” such as developing treatments.
As far as I am concerned, millions of Americans survived COVID because of Fauci’s guidance.
Tony
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