Subcommittee Says Things Already Known

And Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success...

Well after 23 months the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released their investigative report, After Action Review (AAR) of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward. Here are the groundbreaking conclusions drawn from the 557 page narrative.

• COVID-19 likely emerged because of a lab leak.

• EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak shouldn’t receive anymore tax dollars.

• Public health officials aren’t trusted anymore.

• U.S. National Institutes of Health funded Gain-of-Function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

• The Chinese government, U.S. agencies, and members of the international scientific community engaged in a cover-up.

• There was rampant fraud, waste, and abuse.

• School closures were dumb.

• The Constitution cannot be suspended in times of crisis.

Oh yes. Let’s not neglect to mention… Operation warp Speed (OWS) was a resounding success.

With the exception of the commentary on OWS, every single one of those conclusions were already known. There is nothing profound or insightful and the sad fact of the matter… Congress had very little to do with uncovering any of those secrets. By mid 2020, organizations like DRASTIC, Children’s Health Defense, U.S. Right to Know, and an army of FOIA warriors could have ghost written the AAR for these insipid, overpaid, and incurious bunch of legislators claiming victory.

Despite the unearned, self-congratulatory nature of their report, there are real reasons to be grateful.

• This serves as a foundation for future litigation. There may be an ongoing criminal investigation into EcoHealth Alliance.

• It may a valuable tool in our EEO administrative actions.

• While it is not legislation, it sets the bar a little higher if another authoritarian regime decides mandates are a good idea.

• They are starting to use the right terminology. Therapeutics is a close approximate to gene therapies. Almost there snookums. Maybe you can get it right in another two years!

Close but no cigar was the intended effect.

There were a lot of agencies and departments left out of this investigation. Perhaps they are looking to collect more information before diving into DOD, DARPA, DTRA, Mike Pence, or the role the Office of Science and Technology Policy played in the cover-up. There was only cursory mention of USAID, Department of State and other three letter organizations, and it really didn’t touch on government wide censorship. The report took some well-deserved potshots at the Biden-Kamala leadership train wreck, but there was little direct mention of any other leadership failures, like President Trump’s seemingly blind trust in Fauci.

There were a number of infuriating statements as well.

Testing for COVID was flawed, but public-private partnerships resulted in readily available tests.

Hey the tests didn’t work! They were a tool meant to keep us housebound, alone, and poor. No one wants authoritarianism. Even less desirable… No one wants tyranny outsourced.

Travel restrictions can save lives.

If only we could have imposed travel restrictions earlier, the virus that was less deadly than the flu and already circulating could have been stopped. I guess we’ll lock down harder next time.

Operation Warp Speed was a success and saved millions of lives.

This little gem sticks out like a sore thumb.

First of all, this wasn’t an investigative report into OWS. If it were, the index would have been 557 pages. OWS was a biodefense countermeasures tabletop exercise. Like a game of Axis and Allies, they spent 20 years setting up the game board and used an unwitting American public like their personal meeple tokens. They didn’t reveal their true intent until the game ended. It wasn’t a scene from the 1998 box office hit Armageddon. We didn’t call in a maverick team of science-nerd countermeasure experts to save the planet in mere months.

Got the old cruise control set at 35.

We weren’t even responding to an unknown threat. Let’s not forget the genetic sequence for SARs-CoV-2 contained a Moderna patent from 2016…

That statement was at best political maneuvering. No need to upset the biopharmaceutical donors, nor an incoming administration in love with the idea that the planet was saved by American ingenuity and a fearless leader with the will to lead…

At worst, the statement is a not-so-subtle reminder to the proletariat that some areas of investigation are still off limits.

There are still reasons to be optimistic.

With a couple notable exceptions, Trumps administrative picks don’t appear inclined to let it drop. RFK Jr. will upend HHS and the swamp things hiding in the bureaucratic dark spaces. Dr. Battacharya will be an excellent Director NIH, and a number of others appear to be eagerly awaiting an opportunity to bring back accountability.

This report needed to come out now.

Why?

Anything challenging the narrative after a change in administration would have been labeled “Trump science” and the motives of any accountability would have been impugned as politicized revenge.

Those claims will happen regardless, but this flawed report helped suck the asymptomatic COVID air out of the room.