Fauci to testify before Congress on COVID-19

On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci will testify before a congressional committee about the COVID-19 pandemic.

In January of 2020 a new strain of coronavirus was killing people in China. By February it was in the United States, by March businesses, churches, schools, and essentially all civic life was ordered shut down by public health authorities. There was no recommended treatment for the novel virus so a vaccine was rushed through development and was being administered en masse by November. Despite the best efforts of governments, the virus was not contained and to this point 705 million people got the SARS-like virus, now commonly referred to as COVID-19 and over 7 million people globally have died. In the U.S. there have been 112 million cases and 1,219,487 deaths. Presently there are 786,167 active cases in the USA and 989 of those are in critical condition.

At the time of the outbreak, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases. Fauci, who appeared on all manner of media, directed the U.S. efforts to combat the spread of the virus and direct "Operation Warp Speed" the global effort to develop a vaccine for the virus.

Because Fauci and the leading health authorities at the time did not approve any treatment for COVID-19, even though some dissident doctors were claiming positive results with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, by law NIH backed pharmaceutical companies, including Moderna and Pfizer were able to get emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration for the experimental vaccines, even for children and pregnant women, despite there being very limited testing of the vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges over ten thousand deaths following the vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of Americans claim some sort of vaccine injury, including myocarditis, ball's palsy, and loss of cognitive function.

Fauci will testify before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for two days. He is expected to face questions about the origins of COVID-19, the controversial vaccine mandates, and how to prevent future pandemics.

Fauci dismissed claims that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China and instead promulgated the idea that the virus was released due to an undercooked bat sold at a meat market in Wuhan. Investigators have thoroughly discredited the meat market story and established that the lab in Wuhan that was studying coronaviruses is most likely the culprit behind the global pandemic. That lab had received support from the U.S. government.

Top officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) appear to have tried to hide public records from Congress on the pandemic leading some Republicans to advocate for an overhaul of the agency.

The emails uncovered in the investigation by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus have led to bipartisan criticism of the $49 billion agency.

The NIH is the top biomedical research grant agency in the world.

In a May 28 letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, subcommittee's chair, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said the evidence "suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of NIH and NIAID to avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic."

The committee has uncovered evidence that Fauci may have used his personal email to limit the transparency of his work with NIH.

House Republicans have proposed cutting NIH's budget by 8 percent and a second Trump administration could potentially lead to even deeper reorganization at the agency.

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