Nearly 14 months ago, on April 7, 2020, I proposed a commission. Not the January 6th commission blocked this week by most Republican US Senators on the evolving and overblown incursion of unarmed yahoos at the US Capitol, which of course, had not happened yet. But a commission on the origins and government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. I suggested the ideal person to lead it: renowned heart-lung surgeon, health policy expert, and former US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN).
After all, more people have died from (or, with) COVID - nearly 600,000 - than the one lone unarmed protestor at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a still-unnamed Capitol Police officer. Others have died in association with events that day, including the late Officer Brian Sicknick, but as we now know, mostly from natural causes. Meanwhile, some 500 Capitol rioters have been charged or prosecuted by the Department of Justice, with more likely. Some reportedly have been incarcerated under curious conditions, perhaps if they hadn’t filmed selfies: dangerous insurrectionists, these stupid clowns.
House Democrats once talked about a COVID commission, but that mysteriously faded into the background like a Homer Simpson meme.
Meanwhile, events at the Capitol gave congressional Democrats a fresh new cause, despite being far less relevant to American lives touched or businesses torched by the pandemic of increasingly dubious Chinese origin. President Biden was belatedly right to order intelligence agencies to get to the truth, and some people, like Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), have been right over the target all along. A lot of media people owe him a big apology.
Of course, we know why. Democrats found plenty of Republican legislators (35 in the House, 6 in the Senate) to make their partisan cause celebre “bipartisan.”
This raises the question du jour. Why are congressional Democrats pushing for a Capitol riot commission while the real need is for one on the coronavirus? After, Democrats successfully used both to 1) defeat him for reelection (coronavirus) and 2) impeach him a second time, albeit on what is turning out to be largely false pretenses, especially because Trump “incited” an “armed insurrection.”
We know why. Political capital gained from the pandemic has run its course, while the “insurrection” is fresh fodder for the political grist mill. It helps to have a few Republicans support your political objective. It doesn’t help, however, when you have several existing official investigations of the Capitol riots already underway, while there doesn’t seem to be much focus on COVID’s origins or mishandling. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appears to be in more political trouble for sexual harassment accusations than the deaths of thousands of COVID-positive seniors he forced into nursing homes.
Yet much of the media continues to downplay the actual origins of the coronavirus. Did the US government help fund so-called “gain of function” research? That means “pushing” or manipulating the virus in a lab to see how it might evolve, including the ability to jump from animals to humans. Of course, since we’re talking about a Communist Chinese lab, weaponization cannot be ruled out.
A commission to look at every aspect of the Wuhan (or, CCP, for Communist Chinese Party) virus would be valuable. We need to understand the virus’s true origins. Let’s do a deep dive into initial government responses. What about the World Health Organization’s role? How about President Xi’s lies to the world? And don’t forget US agency mishandling initial testing (Centers for Disease Control), and faulty, even irresponsible political messaging from everyone from Dr. Anthony Fauci to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The real value of such a commission would be to prepare us for the next pandemic. And we seem to have one about every 10-20 years, although not on the scale of SARS-CoV-2. After President Bush built a national pandemic plan with stockpiles after 2005, President Obama used it but failed to replenish it after the 2009 SARS epidemic. After helping Bush develop the 2005-09 plan, what were Dr. Fauci and his colleagues doing, after the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, to prepare us or even prevent the current pandemic in early 2020 (in fairness, he wasn’t alone)?
Meanwhile, all we’ve seen in response to the January 6th incursion has been thousands of primarily unarmed National Guard troops kept away from home for months and miles of fencing and concertina wire around the US Capitol (some of which still exists). And the lack of a January 6th Commission hasn’t stopped House Democrats from generously increasing funding for the Capitol Police and demanding a permanent presence of the National Guard. Not at the US southern border, but the US Capitol.
Polls may not be showing it yet (or even testing it), but I suspect an increasing number of Americans see through this political charade.
Perhaps after Democrats tire of politics, they can get back to the idea of a serious commission to investigate all aspects of the coronavirus response. This would be an excellent time to start, given so much progress. And I bet Dr. Frist could still lead it.