This week, congressional Republicans got to thump their chest with an oversight hearing, supposedly attempting to gather facts pertaining to the Origins of Covid-19.
It remains to be seen, however, if this was a real fact-finding mission or more of a narrative framing session, banging the war drums against China and declaring the need to further erode America’s constitutional freedoms.
Republican witnesses on the panel included, Former Director of the CDC, Dr. Redfield, M.D., Nicolas Wade, Former Editor, New York Times, Science, and Nature, and Dr. Jamie Metzl, Ph.D., Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council. Paul G. Auwaeter, MD, MBA from Johns Hopkins University was the minority witness.
Several moments of the hearing stand out as newsworthy, once you get past the opening injection of race and KKK baiting by the Democrats on the panel, who smeared Mr. Wade as such due to an alleged comment that David Duke once praised one of his books. I fear David Duke may also like ice cream…. making one of my favorite desserts a grand-wizard special I should permanently abstain from.
Metzl, however, was certainly the most interesting choice for the majority Republicans and played a significant role in the hearing, criticizing China while at the same time defending the World Health Organization and Dr. Tedros and Anthony Fauci.
It is worth noting, the Republican witness, Metzl, was also a member of the Clinton Administration, Senator Joe Biden’s Administration and maintains a whole host of other far left-wing affiliations including the Council on Foreign Relations.
It begs the question, why would they invite him on the panel?
In the hearing, Metzl declared, “Our robust public infrastructure and global coordination are essential for surveillance to identify, track, and contain potential threats, pathogens respect no borders.”
He later continues:
It’s absolutely essential that we work with our international partners and with the W. H. O. and has been said repeatedly when those international partners or potential partners themselves are bad actors, which is absolutely the case with China. That makes things a lot more difficult. Then the World Health Organization, which is absolutely essential, is working with one hand tied behind its back. It doesn’t have the mandate or the authority to do what it needs to do. It, uh, couldn’t have its own independent surveillance capability. In the beginning of the pandemic, when China was preventing the W H O investigators from going to Wuhan, there was nothing that, that they could do. And as I said in my remarks, Dr. Tedros has actually really been at the forefront of fighting for the kind of open inquiry that the Chinese government has so aggressively blocked.
I discuss the hearing in detail with my brilliant and talented co-host Andrew Marcus on the TruthBait Podcast. Thanks to Andrew who took the time to pull several highlights from the hearing.
Listen here cued to the segment at the 59:16 mark:
It seems as though Metzl’s entire reason for being on the panel was to shift blame away from Anthony Fauci claiming that hyper-focus on him, serves the interests of China:
The primary reason there has been no comprehensive investigation into Covid 19 origins is the reprehensible actions of the Chinese government. Since the early days of the pandemic, China’s government has destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned brave Chinese journalists, gagged Chinese scientists actively spread misinformation, and done pretty much everything possible to prevent the kind of unfettered evidence-based in investigation that is so urgently required.
China is must be the primary focus, um, because, but we also have to look at everything, including ourselves. But if we make this process primarily about Dr. Fauci, even though we need to look at everything, if we make it primarily about Dr. Fauci, we will be inappropriately serving the Chinese government a propaganda coup on a silver platter.
Metzl also begins to set a narrative normalizing and defending the use of gain-of-function research:
Enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, E P P research, a type of gain of function research has received renewed attention. Such efforts can help understand possible human pathogen interactions. Assess the likelihood of an, uh, merging pandemics and inform, uh, preparedness efforts, including surveillance and medical counter, uh, measure developments. While such research is inherently risky, requiring strict oversight, uh, there are risks if we don’t undertake this type of research leaving us unprepared.
If there were any insights as to the actual origin of Covid- 19 it came from Congressman Rich McCormick. He certainly seems to discredit the narrative that the virus came from a yummy bowl of bat soup when he asked Metzl how many bats have been recovered from the wild with Covid.
McCormick: So how many species in the wild have we captured that still have this coronavirus syndrome? Cause that would be a very easy thing to do, given its wild, uh, its wide dissemination in the human population and its proximity to Chinese wildlife. How many wild, wild animals have been captured with this coronavirus present in them currently?
Metzl: Uh, well, uh, the, the answer is no.
McCormick: ….not one evidence of a certain species, whether it be dog or bat, has ever been shown to have this virus that somehow or another transferred to human. Yet that is our main evidence and theory to disprove that, albeit the Wuhan, uh, lab that actually stated what they were going to do, and then had the same problem occur, that’s a less likely, that’s a less likely chance in your mind. Is that correct?
Isn’t that an interesting question? Wouldn’t one think, if Covid originated in a wild animal, that species would still be carrying that virus today? Or at least would have been at the height of the pandemic? Yet no one ever took the time or effort to catch a couple bats that transmitted the worst pandemic in the history of the world to humans? Huh…
Jeremy Segal is a documentary filmmaker and writer, you might be familiar with his work as RebelPundit over the previous decade. He is a co-host of the new podcast TruthBait, with fellow documentary filmmaker Andrew Marcus, director/producer of the motion picture Hating Breitbart, an amazing biopic of our dear friend Andrew Breitbart.
TruthBait aires on Tuesday and Friday afternoons on Apple and Spotify.
The post Former Biden Aide and GOP Witness at House Oversight Hearing into Covid Origins Claims COVID Likely Came from a Lab but then Defends the WHO suggesting Gain of Function Research and Global Surveillance are Essential appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
