America's Talking - Republicans Dive Into COVID Origins With Fresh Fervor

Episode Date: March 12, 2023

U.S. House Oversight lawmakers held a subcommittee hearing Wednesday to dig further into where COVID-19 originated and who may be responsible. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, led the hearing, saying they will be investigating not just COVID’s origins, but also decisions made during the pandemic. He began by laying out evidence that the virus came from a lab. "The genome of COVID-19 is inconsistent with expectations and is unique for its group of viruses," he said. "COVID-19 has both a binding domain optimized for human cells and a furin cleavage site – or a small part of the virus that makes it so infectious – that has never been seen before in SARS related viruses. In other words, COVID-19 has unique characteristics that made it very infectious to humans. These have never been seen before in any other viruses of its type." --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus. I'm Dan McAulib, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. We talked last week about this emerging origins of COVID story. There are now more people in government who believe that the Wuhan lab in China is the most likely place where COVID originated, not in the wild, not from a wild. not from a wild bat or anything like that. And in Congress, this week, they launched some hearings into it. You covered that hearing. Casey, tell us what happened.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, this has been the question that went from conspiracy theory to mainstream potential opinion. And, you know, early on in the pandemic, we talked about this a little bit last week, but just to review, you know, people like Senator Tom Cotton raised questions about, hey, there's a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab that studies novel coronaviruses that, you know, is just a few miles from where this coronavirus outbreak happened. Could this be, you know, connected? Could this be where the virus came from?

And he was, you know, mocked. The Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, you know, all called it some version of a myth, conspiracy theory, fringe theory. And actually Washington Post issued a correction after that. But because as time went on, more and more evidence piled up to say, not conclusively that it definitely came from there. But, hey, there's actually good reason to consider this isn't a real. realistic theory. And of course, the FBI was the first to say something about that. They conducted

there on an investigation and said that Wuhan Lab is actually the most likely place for or origin of COVID-19. Now, the time went by. And now here we have, you know, the Wall Street Journal reporting that top intelligence officials briefed some leaders in Congress and the White House and said that the Department of Energy had come to the same conclusion as the FBI. So now we have two. Now, this isn't the whole federal government has not come to this conclusion, but we have two major agencies, one of which is the FBI, which if anybody's good at investigations, it should be them, right? They came to this conclusion that actually Wuhan could be the real origin place or the lab could be the origin of COVID-19. So lawmakers have dove into this.

They are demanding that, you know, the Biden administration declassify all these COVID-19 investigations, all the documents so they can figure this out to what extent China was responsible. Well, you know, there's a lot of, there's definitely some evidence that China knew how bad COVID was and didn't tell the rest of the world because they reacted really in the early days of COVID, China really reacted very quickly and very strongly while the rest of the world was kind of largely unaware of what COVID-19 really was. So there's that question, what, you know, what China knew. There's also the question of, hey, wait a minute. Actually, U.S. tax dollars were funding this Wuhan lab. Now there's debate over to what kind of research was done there and whether federal dollars. actually funded the kind of research that could have created this virus. But it is true that,

you know, tax dollars went to this lab. There's a lot of oversight there. Was there any oversight? You know, what kind of are we funding dangerous research in other parts of the world that could come back to bite us? Right. So that's one of the questions here. And that's what was brought up in this hearing this week. Lawmakers want answers. I think this, I don't think a ton of answers came out of this hearing, but it set the stage for many future hearings, more and more investigation, more scrutiny on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who really downplayed the idea that the virus could have come from a lab. And now it seems like he may have overplayed his hand on that. He was essentially the face of the federal government's response to COVID the first couple of years.

Certainly mainstream media loved him and had him as a focus of their coverage. He definitely downplayed the Wuhan lab theory early on, even though he was responsible for giving out grants to the lab, To begin with, he has faced increased scrutiny in recent weeks because of this. He was not at the hearing this week, correct? No, he wasn't. And you're right. Fauci really became the authority on COVID and has come into more and more scrutiny. I think there's just as more times gone on, more evidence has come out.

And that's what we really needed early on in the pandemic. We needed data. We needed evidence. We just didn't have it. And the more evidence comes out, the more some of these theories that were initially discounted are actually getting more credibility. And the more that happens, the more Fauci's credibility is a real. wrote it. Do you expect Congress to seek testimony from Dr. Fauci, even to the point where if they

have to subpoena him? I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, Republicans are really on this right now. They are really on this bent of these investigations. I mean, the House Oversight Committee has launched so many investigations and all kinds of things. They are being the most aggressive I've ever, I've ever seen the House Oversight Committee be. So I wouldn't be surprised if they try to crack down and Fauci. And when they're the minority like this, you know, with the Democratic president, Congress can't focus too much on legislation unless you really feel like you're going to have the votes and the cooperation of the president. So investigations are, you know, can be where lawmakers put their focus when they don't have a president or their own party who they think will support

their policy ideas. To our listeners, you can keep up with all of Casey Harper's great coverage of this and other developing stories at thecenter square.com or Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKeel. Thank you for listening.