Fauci talks to Congress on COVID: Three key takeaways

In a highly anticipated hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci today testified before a House panel that largely centered on who is most responsible for the loss of trust in public health officials. 

This marked the first time that Dr. Fauci, the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has appeared before Congress since retiring in 2022 after a half-century career in public health. 

In many ways, Dr. Fauci became the face of the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, he became perhaps one of the most polarizing figures of the greatest public health crisis in a century: a hero to supporters and a villain to critics. His previous appearances before Congress therefore became flashpoints, particularly those involving GOP Sen. Rand Paul. 

This panel, led by two doctors – one Republican, one Democrat – has arguably established greater credibility than other congressional efforts. Known as the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, it demonstrated last month an ability to work in a serious, bipartisan way to investigate transparency and compliance concerns around U.S.-funded work on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began.

Today’s hearing was more contentious. Here are three key takeaways:

1. GOP and Democrats disagree on why trust in public health declined  

Republicans on the committee today alleged that a lack of forthrightness about what officials knew – and didn’t know – undermined faith in public health policy. They argued that understanding if and why officials were not transparent is necessary to implementing reforms needed to strengthen the country’s pandemic prevention and preparedness.

Democrats took a starkly different view. They accused their GOP colleagues of undermining trust in public health officials by attacking Dr. Fauci, whose policy recommendations such as vaccine mandates they oppose and resent.

Dr. Raul Ruiz, the panel’s top Democrat, said the committee had a choice: Fuel mistrust in public officials and the interventions they advocated amid a major crisis, or “work constructively on the forward-looking policies and solutions” needed to prevent and prepare for future public health threats.  

Both sides pointed to the need to rebuild trust in order to improve pandemic prevention and preparedness.

“What should have been a 9/11 moment for this country was turned into a political nightmare,” said GOP Chair Brad Wenstrup. “We need to do better.”

2. Virus “gain of function”: Parties still divided on whether Fauci misled Congress 

A key issue in today’s hearing was whether the U.S. had funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the same city where the pandemic broke out in late 2019.

Since early in the pandemic, Republicans have voiced concern about a National Institutes of Health grant, approved by Dr. Fauci’s agency, to study the potential for bat coronaviruses to jump to humans. It was awarded to a New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, which was to carry out the work with its partners at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

In a May 11, 2021, Senate hearing, Dr. Fauci told GOP Sen. Rand Paul that “The NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Five months later, the NIH told Congress in a letter that EcoHealth had violated the terms of the grant by not immediately reporting virus growth that exceeded a stipulated threshold. To Republicans, that virus growth sounded like the common definition of “gain of function.”

But Dr. Fauci told the committee that the appropriate definition to use, which guided his answer to Senator Paul, is found in a regulatory framework known as P3CO that was introduced in 2017. According to that more specialized definition, he said, the work did not constitute gain-of-function research.

Essentially, Democrats – who pulled no punches in grilling EcoHealth’s president last month – have sided with Dr. Fauci. Republicans maintain that the research was risky and admonished Dr. Fauci that he should have been clearer with Congress – and the public.

The backdrop is a debate over whether this line of questioning helps to expose weaknesses with NIH’s grant approval and compliance processes, enabling them to be addressed, or whether it represents a politically motivated vendetta against Dr. Fauci.

The veteran official, normally stoic, choked up when asked about the death threats he, his wife, and three daughters have received. It’s a “powerful disincentive” to young people going into public health, he added.

Dr. Fauci praised the value and integrity of the U.S. public health system, distancing himself from a top adviser who last month appeared before the committee to discuss emails that appeared to show efforts to circumvent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by conducting government business on his private email. Dr. Fauci said they didn’t work in the same building, and denied wrongdoing, calling his colleague’s conduct “unbecoming.”

Republicans, however, sought to make the case that this example of malfeasance, together with bipartisan concerns around the EcoHealth grant, illustrate the need for reform at Dr. Fauci’s former agency.

“This joint investigation has shown just how little oversight NIAID does of risky experiments involving potential pandemic pathogens,” said GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, who leads oversight for the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over public health agencies.

3. Democrats want a serious investigation into COVID origins 

For more than a year after the pandemic shut down America, Democrats described the “lab leak” hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, witch hunt, or – at best – highly implausible. They pointed to prominent researchers who argued that scientific evidence favored a natural spillover from animals to humans. During their 2021-22 majority in Congress, Democrats largely refused GOP requests to investigate the COVID-19 origin question.

So it’s noteworthy that now Democrats on this committee are urging the GOP chair to use their remaining half a year to seriously investigate how COVID-19 began. 

They say the committee has wasted taxpayer money by focusing so narrowly on whether the EcoHealth grant may have started the pandemic – a hypothesis for which no scientific evidence has emerged. (A footnote of the Democrats’ minority staff report acknowledges, however, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has withheld lab notebooks and other records needed for a complete analysis.) They would like to see more thorough investigation into the spillover hypothesis.

Claiming that misconduct by two public health figures – Dr. David Morens, senior adviser to Fauci, and EcoHealth president Peter Daszak – amounts to proof that the U.S.-funded research caused the pandemic is an “extreme narrative’’ and betrayal of the public trust, Dr. Ruiz said today.

He committed, however, to keeping an open mind about how the pandemic started as the committee finished out its work this year. 

“Understanding whether the novel coronavirus emerged from a lab or from nature is essential,’’ he said, “to better preventing and preparing for future public health threats and to better protecting the American people.’’