The After Action Report They Spent Four Years Avoiding
The After Action Report They Spent Four Years Avoiding
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
For four years, America was told that COVID was too complicated to revisit. Too painful. Too politicized. Best to “move on.”
That’s not how adults operate.
That’s how people hide.
Last week, Congress finally did what should have been done in 2021: it issued an After Action Report.
Not a press release.
Not a narrative.
An audit.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a 520-page final report—two years of hearings, depositions, subpoenas, and over a million documents—titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.”
In military terms, this is a hot wash. No chest-thumping. No spin. Just: What happened? What mattered? What failed? What must never be repeated?
Bob read it. Slowly. With a pencil.
“Funny how everything we weren’t allowed to say for years suddenly shows up in an official report—once the emergency powers expire.”
The report concludes what polite society spent years pretending was unsayable: COVID most likely originated from a laboratory incident in Wuhan, China.
Not a conspiracy theory.
A conclusion reached by evidence.
The report documents that the paper used to shut down discussion of a lab leak—the infamous Proximal Origin—was prompted by senior U.S. officials to push a preferred narrative.
That matters.
Not because it assigns cosmic blame, but because truth suppression is always more dangerous than the truth itself.
“If the facts are strong, you don’t need to censor anyone.”
This was not a story of imperfect knowledge. It was a story of institutional self-protection.
NIH oversight of gain-of-function research was fragmented and unserious. EcoHealth Alliance routed U.S. taxpayer money into risky research in China and then obstructed oversight. Senior officials deleted records, evaded FOIA, and slow-walked congressional inquiries.
That’s not a virus problem.
That’s a management failure.
Relief money was sprayed, not stewarded.
At least $64 billion was lost to PPP fraud.
$191 billion was lost to unemployment fraud.
Hundreds of millions were lost through SBA failures.
Roughly half of stolen funds flowed through international fraud networks.
“When everyone’s in charge, no one’s accountable.”
Public health guidance followed narrative first, evidence later.
Six feet of distancing was arbitrary.
Mask mandates lacked conclusive evidence.
Lockdowns caused catastrophic collateral damage.
School closures were never justified by science.
Natural immunity was ignored.
Vaccine mandates were imposed without sufficient evidence.
This was not science.
It was narrative enforcement.
“Science doesn’t need to shout. Power does.”
New York’s nursing home policy—forcing COVID-positive patients into nursing homes—was medical malpractice. The cover-up that followed was worse.
Bob: “For the cover-up, he got an Emmy.”
This wasn’t hindsight.
The risks were known.
Censorship didn’t protect trust. It destroyed it.
Lab leak discussion was suppressed.
Off-label treatments were demonized.
Policy critiques were silenced.
Trust does not survive coercion.
“If you have to silence people to keep confidence high, confidence is already gone.”
America did not fail because it lacked information.
America failed because it refused to audit itself in real time.
That’s why this After Action Report matters.
The tragedy isn’t that mistakes were made.
The tragedy is that admitting them was forbidden.
“The virus didn’t break trust. The cover stories did.”
The path forward is not more authority. It’s more memory.
Clear authority chains.
Transparent settlement criteria.
Honest uncertainty.
Preserved records.
Permanent After Action Reviews.
Systems that don’t learn repeat failure by design.
This report is late.
But it’s necessary.
And it finally does what America needed most.
It tells the truth after the game is over—while the tape still matters.
Bob closes the folder.
“Next time, do the hot wash before the medals—and before the censorship.”