Bipartisan Senate group backs 911-style commission on COVID-19 response
A bipartisan group of senators said Tuesday they are seeking a â9/11-style commissionâ to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the U.S. governmentâs response and ways to prevent a similar tragedy.
Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, said a bipartisan commission is âlong overdueâ as the nation grapples with a virus thatâs killed over 750,000 people in the U.S. and millions more around the world.
âAs a physician, I think we always need to know the what, where, how, and why when giving a diagnosis. For this reason, it couldnât be more important that we determine the origins of this infectious disease outbreak in order to ensure nothing like this ever happens again,â Mr. Marshall said.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York co-sponsored legislation to create the commission.
âAs the threat of major pandemics increases due to globalization and climate change, we must learn from what happened during this pandemic to ensure weâre prepared for any future outbreaks,â Ms. Feinstein said. âThis bipartisan commission will ensure we learn all we can from the past 18 months so the immense human suffering and economic devastation weâve endured never happens again.â
The bill is modeled on the so-called â9/11 Commissionâ that was set up in 2002 to fully examine the 2001 terror attacks on the homeland and look at ways to prevent future attacks.
The COVID commission would look at the governmentâs overall response to the pandemic, including its ability to procure supplies and develop tests, treatments and vaccines. It will look at whether public-health messages were effective and resonated with all communities, including the risk of stigma after Asian communities said coarse descriptions of the virusâs origins in China led to discrimination and harassment.
The commission will examine U.S. cooperation with countries abroad, because it was a global pandemic, and whether the nationâs health care system is adequately prepared for major public health crises.
âWe simply cannot wait for the next crisis to hit â" we must create a 9/11-style COVID-19 commission to prepare a comprehensive health and national security strategy to protect and equip the United States in the event of another devastating emergency,â Ms. Gillibrand said.
Republican sponsors, meanwhile, said it is important to look back at the origins of the virus and explore the fierce debate over whether it occurred naturally or was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab that researched bat coronaviruses in the same central Chinese city where the pandemic began.
âThe COVID-19 outbreak that emerged in Wuhan, China nearly two years ago put the world into an unprecedented global lockdown, and to this day, the origins of the pandemic remain a mystery as China refuses to fully cooperate with international fact-finding efforts,â Ms. Ernst said. âThe American people and the world deserve answers, which is why Iâm proud to join my colleagues across the aisle to create a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of the pandemic once and for all â" and ensure it never happens again.â
Mr. Marshall said he will press the National Institutes of Health for more information about U.S.-funded research at the lab and whether it made certain viruses more dangerous.
Federal scientists have said a federal grantee at the lab didnât detail one of its projects in a timely manner, as required by the grant. However, they insist it is biologically impossible for that project to be linked to the coronavirus that is bedeviling the world.
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