https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12.04.2024-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT.pdf
Although all five of the major federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates are now rescinded, overturned, or otherwise ended, their consequences will live on for years to come. The COVID-19 vaccine mandates caused people to lose their livelihoods, hollowed out our healthcare and education workforces, reduced our military readiness and recruitment, caused vaccine hesitancy, reduced trust in public health, trampled individual freedoms, deepened political divisions, and interered in the patient-physician relationship.
Aside from these severe consequences, the scientific basis of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates was highly questionable. COVID-19 mandates ignored natural immunity, stratification of risk from the virus, risk of adverse events from the vaccine, as well as the fact that the vaccines don’t prevent the spread of COVID-19. Meanwhile, as the Select Subcommittee has established in previous hearings, federal health officials consistently overstated the power of the vaccines and deepening political divides with statements like “the pandemic of unvaccinated.” This is yet another example of the Biden Administration’s guidance and policies straying far outside boundaries of the available evidence while proudly proclaiming they were “following the science.” For them, “because I told you so” was good enough.
Many countries, including the U.K., Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, followed the guidelines of the WHO. The WHO specifically did not recommend masking children aged five or younger because they are at low risk of illness, masks are “not in the overall interest of the child,” and also because most children that age are not capable of wearing a mask properly or effficiently. The WHO also recommended children aged six through 11 not routinely wear masks because of potential adverse impact to psychological and learning development. The WHO further explicitly advised against children wearing masks during physical activities, such as outside playground time, so as not to impede their breathing.
“Social distancing was one of the most consequential policies of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the committee wrote in the report. “Social distancing is the practice of intentionally maintaining a physical space between yourself and other people. On March 22, 2020, the CDC issued guidance specifically designating six feet, or two arm’s length, as the distance that would best reduce the spread of the coronavirus.”
The report from the committee noted that during a June 2024 public hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had articulated “that the six-foot rule for social distancing was not supported by quality scientific standards” and had “attempted to further distance himself from the issue by stating the decision making of this policy implementation was the responsibility of the CDC.”
