House panel questions Fauci on pandemic origins

During the hearing, Democrats on the panel praised Fauci, with Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) disparaging the Republican-led inquiry as "a witch hunt."

Meanwhile, Republicans blamed Fauci for school closings, mask ordinances, and other "invasive" policies, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggesting that Fauci "belong[s] in prison."

Fauci has faced suspicion regarding grants that NIAID contributed to EcoHealth Alliance, an American virus-hunting nonprofit. To anticipate disease outbreaks, the grants required that EcoHealth pass some of its funding to scientific collaborators across the world, including a coronavirus lab located in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 pandemic began.

However, Fauci noted that it was "molecularly impossible" for the experiments occurring in Wuhan to have produced the virus that started the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's just a virological fact," Fauci said, while also acknowledging that he didn't know whether unreported experiments in China focused more closely on related viruses.

Fauci added that he has kept an open mind regarding the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic originated as part of a lab leak rather than originating in animals.

"I don't think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory," Fauci said. "What is conspiracy is the kind of distortion of that particular subject. Like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne."

Fauci added that he believes the weight of the evidence points towards the coronavirus that began the pandemic originating from animals rather than leaking from a lab.

Members of the House panel expressed concern over a series of private emails from David Morens, a former senior advisor to Fauci, and Greg Folkers, a former chief of staff to Fauci, obtained by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suggesting that some NIH officials attempted to subvert their obligations under that law.

"I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia'd but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe," Morens wrote in an email on Feb. 24, 2021. "Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail."

In a May 28 letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, the 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."

Fauci denied ever using his personal email to conduct any agency business and criticized Morens for his handling of public records and dealings with leaders of EcoHealth.

"It was a terrible thing," Fauci said. "It was wrong and it was inappropriate."

Fauci added that he and Morens worked together on scientific papers over the years, but that Morens "was not an adviser to me on institute policy."

Ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) criticized Republican leadership on the panel, saying the committee had probed the lab leak theory for 16 months without a "shred of evidence" for the involvement of NIH officials.

Ruiz told reporters later that he didn't learn "a single thing" from the hearing on Monday. "Just that [Republicans] want to continue to promote their false allegations and then continue to confuse the American people on Dr. Fauci's word."

Fauci says social distancing rules 'sort of just appeared'

Social distancing rules from the pandemic also came under scrutiny. In a closed-door testimony from January, Fauci told the House panel that the six-foot social distancing rule "sort of just appeared" and was "an empiric decision that wasn't based on data."

Fauci added on Monday that he was referring to the absence of any controlled studies on the optimal distance, which he noted wouldn't have been possible before the rules were implemented.

"These were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of death early on," Fauci said. "How long you kept them going is debatable."

Francis Collins, former director of NIH, also privately testified to Congress in January that he wasn't aware of any evidence behind the social distancing recommendations.

Similarly, Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director under the Trump administration, told a congressional subcommittee in March 2022 that "There was no magic around six feet. It's just historically that's what was used for other respiratory pathogens. So that really became the first piece" of a strategy to protect Americans during the early days of the pandemic.

However, experts agree that social distancing saved lives, especially early in the pandemic, the Washington Post reports. A recent paper published by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, found that behavior changes to avoid developing COVID-19, followed later by vaccinations, prevented around 800,000 deaths. However, the authors added the achievement came at a significant cost with inflexible strategies that weren't evidence-driven.

"We never did the study about what works," said Andrew Atkeson, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author of the paper. (Mueller/Stolberg, New York Times, 6/3; Mueller, New York Times, 5/28; Diamond, Washington Post, 6/2; Hilzenrath, KFF Health News, 5/31; Owermohle, STAT, 6/3)