'Layers of plausible deniability': GOP blasts feds for lack of transparency at final COVID hearing

National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leaders acknowledge they have a communication problem with the American people on COVID-19 and risk level of both the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its treatments.

Members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic told agency leaders at its final hearing Thursday that they also have a communication problem with Congress, and must provide clear, specific answers to lawmakers' questions, from accountability for bad actors to their plans for nuanced harm-benefit analyses in layman's terms as vaccine hesitancy soars.

Republicans laughed incredulously as Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak claimed he couldn't even tell them if NIH had started its investigation of David Morens for his repeated written admissions of circumventing the Freedom of Information Act to hide his discussions with outside scientists on U.S. funding of the Chinese lab from which COVID may have leaked.

Morens, senior scientific adviser to former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, was removed from his position and put on administrative leave after the subcommittee revealed his communications, Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said in January.

CDC Office of Readiness and Response Director Henry Walke's rote paeans to the safety, efficacy and rigorous review of COVID vaccines earned bipartisan rebukes.

"Please don't do that," Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa and former public health director for the state, interrupted Walke. "I'm asking you how is the CDC going to overcome increasing vaccine hesitancy," worsened by its "forceful guidance" for one-size-fits-all vaccination and lack of details on adverse outcomes such as elevated myocarditis risks in young men.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., said Wilke didn't answer his question on how the CDC will "evolve … your presentation of the evidence" in response to "things that come up" after vaccine approval, related to "special groups or special circumstances." Wilke had blamed misinformation for the "plateau" in COVID death rates after a "magnificent" drop he attributed to vaccination.

Only 15.3% of eight million healthcare personnel at more than 4,100 "acute care hospitals" and 10.5% of nursing home personnel received the 2023-2024 COVID vaccine, according to the CDC's Oct. 31 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The agency also recently warned this season's flu vaccine is likely to be worse at preventing hospitalization than previous years.

Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s role in Donald Trump's second administration panicked Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., hours before the GOP president-elect announced he'll nominate the Democratic scion to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Children's Health Defense founder and environmental lawyer "has no scientific or medical credentials" and has made "outrageous comments" such as attributing autism to vaccines, Garcia said, calling him a "vaccine denier." (RFK Jr. recently said he's not "anti-vaccine" and promised to focus on informed consent for vaccines rather than eliminating them.)

Chair Wenstrup and California Rep. Raul Ruiz, the committee's top Democrat, gave diametrically opposed assessments of the subcommittee's work, which will end with a final report and recommendations in "the coming weeks," Wenstrup said.

Lawmakers revealed "inconsistent, contradictory guidance" from the CDC on school reopening, even after kids' low risk was clear, and NIH's "glaring lack of oversight over federal grants" to the lab-leak suspect Wuhan Institute of Virology via the EcoHealth Alliance, Wenstrup said. 

Federal officials also ignored clinical trials to falsely claim COVID vaccines would make a "dead end" of the virus, he said.

Because NIAID "encroached into CDC's lane by advising on matters pertaining to containing the spread, creating confusion among the American people," the retiring Wenstrup called on Congress to create a "dedicated authority" to limit agencies to "their areas of statutory responsibilities and subject matter expertise" and increase transparency.

Ruiz repeated his longstanding assertion that the GOP-led subcommittee "did not shed light on the origins" of COVID and found no evidence to substantiate "extreme and baseless claims," only revealing "discrete issues of misconduct" such as FOIA follies by Morens to help his friend, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak.

California Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, like many panel members a physician, said lawmakers should accept both lab-leak and natural origin as "plausible theories" for COVID, admit that ongoing research should have informed policy decisions such as school closures, and study lingering mysteries such as why COVID did not "rip through" California, Japan or India as feared.

Congress can't prepare for the next pandemic – the stated purpose of Thursday's hearing – without making further progress on origins, Miller-Meeks said. 

The media portrayed that inquiry as a "witch hunt" when she joined Congress in 2020, applied "demeaning terms" to people "simply for questioning whether novel vaccines that had not been FDA approved were right for them, and CDC messaging discouraged patients from asking their doctors questions, Miller-Meeks said.

Walke insisted that "vaccines are incredibly effective and the best defense" against COVID but conceded that providers can "interpret" CDC guidance for their patients. 

FDA Chief Medical Officer Hilary Marston told Mfume the agencies must "show our work and explain our work," such as finding safety signal in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, and provide "digestible information" to clinicians to give to their patients rather than simply publishing findings for a professional audience.

She told Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., that "repeated studies" show COVID boosters are "important and are saving lives," citing a Denmark study that found people boosted against the XBB variant had a quarter the hospitalization rate of un-boosted people. Marston didn't name the study or mention it in her prepared testimony.

Marston claimed, again without evidence, that 3.2 million additional people would have died without COVID vaccines, and frustrated Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., by comparing their risk of adverse events to the risk of drinking too much water. 

"We're not talking about water and water toxicity," Joyce retorted. "We're talking about misinformation" – former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky initially claiming vaccinated individuals can't get sick or transmit the virus.

Joyce pressed Walke to specify how often his CDC and Marston's FDA actually meet and share data to ensure guidance is consistent with evidence, with Walke eventually saying they met weekly and that "various levels" meet face to face on a "regular basis."

Tabak's attempts to parry GOP questions about Morens provided the comic relief for the hearing. 

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., showed the NIH official Morens' own emails – sharing draft materials with EcoHealth, helping the nonprofit with responses to congressional inquiries and stating he "deleted everything" from EcoHealth to his government email – and asked whether they showed NIH policy violations and lying to Congress, a felony.

When Tabak questioned whether Morens "successfully deleted" emails – something that shouldn't be possible for a "capstone employee" – Comer laughed and retorted "he thought he deleted them!" Tabak declined to commit to firing Morens, reiterating "we are following all of our procedures to the letter."

Arizona GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko, who like Wenstrup is retiring from Congress, struggled to nail down Tabak on what NIH was actually doing with Morens.

"What is the process?" she asked, prompting Tabak to describe a "hypothetical" in which an accused employee is allowed to present their side and appeal a decision against them to a second official. He refused to say whether that process had even started, prompting Lesko to predict the incoming Trump administration would make such firings easier.

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, marveled at the witnesses asking for more funding and legal authorities to address the next pandemic while evading responsibility for decisions such as indirectly funding the Wuhan lab.

He noted Fauci told the subcommittee he didn't read the grants he approved but trusted the judgment of committees that recommended approval, but those committees were voting on "block grants" for many projects. "These supposed multiple layers of accountability turn into multiple layers of plausible deniability," Cloud said.