Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) sharply condemned the House Republicans’ investigation into the origins of COVID-19, saying that attention should instead be directed toward adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines.
Greene held a hearing on Friday to examine the “injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines,” including increasing rates of myocarditis, pericarditis, and blood clots.
The hearing was hosted independently of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic because, according to Greene, subcommittee leadership “refuses to do anything about what Americans actually care about.”
“We all know that COVID came from a Chinese lab in Wuhan,” Greene said. “We don’t need to investigate the origins of COVID anymore. We need to look at the data, of which there is so much, that shows the vaccines hurt or killed thousands of Americans.”
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic was initially established by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2020 to oversee congressional spending packages for economic relief during nationwide lockdowns.
At the beginning of the 118th Congress in 2022, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy reoriented the goals of the committee toward an investigatory role in the origins of the virus, gain-of-function viral research, coronavirus-related government spending, and vaccine and mask mandate policies.
Chairman of the subcommittee Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) has been highly critical of vaccine mandate policies but has not condemned mRNA vaccine technology as unsafe.
“So many people have been affected, yet politicians here in Washington are too afraid to do anything about it,” Greene said. “Our job is to care about the issues our constituents care about.”
Although the Republican majority on the subcommittee has published several reports corroborating a possible accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the source of SARS-CoV-2, Democratic members of the subcommittee insist that there is no evidence of a lab leak.
“Rather than working constructively to protect Americans’ health and prevent future pandemics by objectively examining COVID-19’s origins, Select Subcommittee Republicans have pursued a politically motivated probe to vilify Dr. Fauci and our nation’s public health officials,” ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-CA) told the Washington Examiner in advance of Anthony Fauci’s transcribed interview with the subcommittee this week.
Wenstrup told the Washington Examiner after the second day of Fauci’s interview testimony that the former White House COVID-19 adviser acknowledged that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.
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As of March 2023, over two-thirds of the public believed that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab, whether intentionally or by accident. Approximately 86% of Republicans, 62% of independents, and 54% of Democrats held this view.
Wenstrup’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
