The COVID-19 pandemic was a major world event that caused irreparable damage to families across the United States. So why does the Biden administration oppose a commission to examine everything that went wrong?
President Joe Biden supported a 9/11-style commission for the Jan. 6 riot, but for the pandemic that killed over a million people and destroyed small businesses and children’s educations, the New York Times tells us that “the White House is privately resisting” one. This is despite the Senate health committee supporting the commission by a vote of 20-2.
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The committee would “investigate the pandemic response by both the Trump and Biden administrations,” which is no doubt necessary. There are plenty of problems to be found under both administrations. Under former President Donald Trump, there was an initial push for lockdowns across the country, including school closures, despite the fact that children were not at serious risk from the coronavirus. School closures and mask mandates for children were encouraged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention throughout Trump’s presidency and into Biden’s.
This is the biggest topic that needs to be examined, but there are others. Questions about the Trump administration’s initial response to the news about the pandemic as it eventually spread to the U.S. should be answered. The conflicting guidance from health officials about masks at the start of the pandemic must be addressed. The National Institutes of Health and its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology also deserve a full examination.
Even the easy questions would start important discussions. The New York Times considers it a “pressing question” about why the U.S. has “a higher death rate from COVID-19 than other wealthy nations.” The likeliest explanation is that the U.S. has a higher obesity rate than other wealthy nations. And yet, obesity was rarely talked about as a risk factor for COVID-19 during the pandemic. Instead, states closed gyms and canceled city and club sports leagues.
On top of that, the bill that would create the commission would also require the director of the CDC to be confirmed by the Senate. This is a no-brainer, given Rochelle Walensky’s terrible performance on the job. If the pandemic made anything clear, it’s that we need more legislative oversight of the health “experts” that make up the federal bureaucracy.
But Biden wants no examination of the executive branch’s failures under his presidency, nor do the bureaucrats who make up his administration want to answer for how they botched the pandemic. Legacy media outlets also aren’t overly interested in the pandemic because the Jan. 6 commission made for better television.
A responsible federal government would make sure we never repeat the errors that were made during the pandemic, and a responsible establishment media would want to get answers about this once-in-a-lifetime event. Unfortunately, no one knows when the U.S. will get either of those things.
