Investigation sought into COVID-19
Expert group prepares in hopes Congress will OK a 9/11-style inquiry on crisis and concerns.
With over 600,000 Americans dead of COVID-19 and questions still raging about the origin of the novel coronavirus and the government’s response to the pandemic, a push is underway for a full-blown investigation of the crisis by a national commission like the one that looked into 9/11.
It is unclear whether such a probe will happen, though a privately sponsored team of public health experts is already laying the groundwork for one.
Given that most of the disaster unfolded on former President Trump’s watch, many worry that politics will get in the way of any inquiry, as happened when Republicans came out against a commission to investigate Trump supporters’ Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Others fear that a widespread desire to simply move on will thwart a review.
“I think we need to get into the weeds, to look at the details to see what happened,” said Sabila Khan of Jersey City, N.J., whose father, Shafqat Rasul Khan, died of COVID-19. “If this happens again, our loved ones died in vain.”
Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have introduced a bill that would establish such a commission.
Its inquiry could look into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19; early warnings and other communication with foreign governments; coordination among federal, state and local agencies; the availability of medical supplies; testing and public health surveillance; vaccination development and distribution; the increased impact on minorities; and government relief policies.
“The death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic is more than 200 times that of the 9/11 attacks — but Congress has yet to establish a similar blue ribbon commission to investigate the vulnerabilities of our public health system and issue guidance for how we as a nation can better protect the American people from future pandemics,” Menendez and Collins wrote in an essay this week in the New York Times.
While the government’s accelerated program to develop a vaccine proved a success, the crisis was marked in the United States by shortages of protective gear and other medical equipment, insufficient testing, defective test kits, false or misleading information about treatments, and mixed messages on the need for masks and shutdowns.
Last month, President Biden ordered intelligence agencies to step up efforts to investigate the virus’ origins, including the possibility it escaped from a Chinese laboratory — a once-fringe theory that has recently gained attention. Many scientists have said they believe the virus occurred in nature and jumped from animals to humans.
Dr. Naeha Quasba of Baltimore, who lost her father, Ramash Quasba, to the outbreak, favors an investigation that could hold accountable those responsible for failures, which she said include the lack of a national response plan, inadequate health funding and lackadaisical enforcement of public health orders.
“But at this point, my dad is gone and now a vaccine is available,” Quasba said. “So people are moving on.”
While no vote on the legislation is scheduled and its prospects are uncertain, work already underway could help shape an investigation: Members of what is called the COVID Commission Planning Group have spent five months working on the key questions for a commission and the best ways to get answers.
University of Virginia history professor Philip Zelikow, who is leading the planning group and was executive director of the 9/11 Commission, said dozens of experts enlisted with the support of charitable foundations have identified over 40 lines of inquiry.
“All that preparatory work is being done [for] whatever commission gets created — if it’s created by the Congress, created by the president or created independently and privately sponsored,” he said.
The 9/11 Commission, established by Congress in 2002, produced a 567-page report in July 2004 that began with a detailed narrative of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings. It went into the causes of terrorists’ hatred of the U.S., lapses that helped allow the attacks, and suggestions for preventing another one. Many of its suggestions were implemented, including greater sharing of intelligence between agencies.
COVID planning group member Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s School of Public Health, said an alternative to a governmentappointed COVID-19 commission would be one that is privately funded.
“The upside is that it could be done in a less politically charged way,” he said.
Another member, Anita Cicero, deputy director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the debate over whether to investigate the Capitol attack demonstrated that the partisan divide is the first obstacle to overcome.
“The idea that this should be a commission set up by one party or the other — I think that is sort of dead upon arrival,” she said. “So you have to find a way that this is a truly more bipartisan and welcome effort.”