US House Committee Concludes COVID 'Likely' Originated in Wuhan Lab

Facts

• Following a two-year probe, the Republican-led US House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Monday released a report concluding that the pandemic "likely" originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.^[1][2]
• The 520-page report, covering multiple aspects of the pandemic — including the effectiveness of vaccinations, public health guidance, and other government-directed measures — supported the lab-leak theory after conducting dozens of depositions and reviewing more than a million pages of documents, the committee said.^[3][4]
• The report concluded that the virus possessed features that would not occur naturally, including the furin cleavage site that's not present in other Coronaviruses — suggesting it was synthetically added in a laboratory.^[5]
• The report also called out US NGO EcoHealth Alliance, which received National Institute of Health (NIH) sub-grants to carry out "gain-of-function" research at a number of institutions, claiming that it misled the NIH on experiments it was carrying out and that the NIH failed in its oversight of the group.^[3]
• The committee also revealed that EcoHealth Alliance was subject to a Department of Justice grand jury investigation. However, the findings of that probe have yet to be made public and there have been no criminal charges.^[6]
• Elsewhere in the report, the committee challenged a number of public policy decisions surrounding COVID, including saying that masks and mask mandates were "ineffective" while concluding that lockdowns did "more harm than good" to the economy. Social-distancing measures were not supported by science, the report further alleged.^[3]

Sources: ^[1]Al Jazeera, ^[2]Oversight, ^[3]The Hill, ^[4]CNN, ^[5]Daily Mail and ^[6]New York Post.

Narratives

• Right narrative, as provided by Daily Mail and Oversight. This is validation for those who supported the lab-leak theory but were mercilessly attacked for holding that position early in the pandemic. This is just the latest report — probably the most exhaustive yet — supporting the view that the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab.
• Left narrative, as provided by CNN and STAT. This report is politically partisan and unsurprisingly supports the lab-leak theory. But it's far from conclusive on the origins of COVID. Many scientists the world over still hold the view that the virus in fact emerged naturally.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by FMPRC. This report is just political propaganda from US lawmakers against China, which always seems to be America's bogeyman. This slanderous document is built on unscientific fact gathering and conflicts with experts who deem it unlikely that a lab leak kicked off the COVID pandemic.