A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Acknowledging the challenges and responses during the COVID-19 pandemic and committing to accountability and action.

WHEREAS, the COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to the health, well-being, civil rights, and economic stability of the citizens of South Dakota; and

WHEREAS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, caused by the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2003), emerged in late 2002 and had its most significant global impact in 2003, serving as an early 21st-century example of the challenges posed by emerging infectious diseases; and

WHEREAS, both SARS-CoV-2003 and SARS-CoV-2, which was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, are classified as beta-coronaviruses, highlighting the ongoing challenges posed by this group of viruses in causing serious respiratory illnesses in humans; and

WHEREAS, in 2014, the Obama administration announced a pause in gain-of-function research, noting that the funding pause applied to gain-of-function research projects that may have been reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route; and

WHEREAS, in January 2017, as President Obama was preparing to leave office, the White House released a statement regarding this pause, stating that projects that were paused under the existing moratorium would be reviewed utilizing a process consistent with the recommended policy guidance, and any projects that are determined suitable to proceed will do so with appropriate risk mitigation measures in place; and

WHEREAS, a grant proposal known as DEFUSE, spearheaded by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, was submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seeking a $14 million grant aimed at enhancing SARS-like bat viruses; and

WHEREAS, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there had never been a coronavirus vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human use in the United States of America, highlighting the unprecedented nature of the vaccine development efforts during the pandemic; and

WHEREAS, vaccine development usually undergoes a series of safety studies spanning several years, typically involving short-term (several months), mid-term (one to two years), and long-term (several years) phases to thoroughly assess safety and efficacy, yet under Operation Warp Speed, these timelines were significantly shortened; and

WHEREAS, it is a fundamental ethical principle in medicine and healthcare that for a medical treatment to be considered justifiable and ethical, the potential benefits to the patient must significantly outweigh any associated risks, a standard essential for safeguarding patient welfare and informed consent in medical decision-making; and

WHEREAS, Professor John Ioannidis, recognized as one of the most cited epidemiologists globally, highlighted the significant risk stratification of COVID-19 by age during the pandemic, noting in a discussion that the majority of deaths occurred in older populations, with an approximately 10,000-fold difference in the risk of fatality between an 80-year-old individual and a child of 10 years, illustrating the stark disparity in vulnerability between the old and the young; and

WHEREAS, in November 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a comprehensive document titled "Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza," meticulously developed over years through systematic review and consideration, independent of any specific crisis, providing deliberate and thoughtfully constructed recommendations on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) including personal protective measures, environmental measures, social distancing measures, and travel-related measures, as informed by extensive research and analysis, with the aim of guiding national authorities in effectively managing influenza epidemics and pandemic; and

WHEREAS, in response to the emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) and China collaborated to form a Joint Mission, undertaking a pivotal investigation into the virus within China; and

WHEREAS, the Joint Mission's comprehensive report, "Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)," provided crucial insights into the virus's natural history, transmission patterns, purported effectiveness of implemented measures, including lockdowns, and areas demanding further research; and

WHEREAS, this report's impact reverberated across the globe, including the United States, shaping public health strategies, and propelling research efforts that continue to guide the ongoing fight against COVID-19; and

WHEREAS, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians, including those treating high-profile patients such as Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in Australia, utilized repurposed medications like chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine; these drugs were considered due to their demonstrated in vitro antiviral effectiveness against coronaviruses and their established low-risk profile, honed by decades of widespread use in treating malaria, thus presenting a potential high-reward scenario in the urgent global search for effective COVID-19 treatments; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, an entity that received funding and was likely involved in the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, orchestrated a letter published in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, which stated, 'We strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,' effectively branding the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, a stance that has been succesfully challenged in light of his organization's ties to the Wuhan lab; and

WHEREAS, in April 2020, reflecting a proactive and committed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Dakota, through collaborative efforts involving the Governor's Office, the South Dakota Department of Health, and Sanford Health, initiated a clinical trial to explore the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19, a step grounded in logical scientific inquiry following promising in vitro analyses of the drug against coronaviruses; and

WHEREAS, ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning medication with a well-documented safety profile and a history of effective use in treating certain parasitic infections, demonstrated promising antiviral properties in in-vitro studies, including potential efficacy against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2; and

WHEREAS, the urgent circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the exploration of all plausible therapeutic options, including repurposing existing medications with known safety profiles, to rapidly address a global health crisis for which no specific and proven treatments were initially available, thereby warranting scientific and clinical investigation into the off-label use of ivermectin as a potential treatment option for COVID-19; and

WHEREAS, in July 2020, Sanford Health, a major healthcare provider in South Dakota, launched an important yearlong study known as Seroprevalence under Repeated Viral Immunity Examination (SURVIVE), with the goal of gaining deeper insights into COVID-19; as Dr. Allison Suttle, Chief Medical Officer for Sanford Health, stated "We wanted to know more about a patient's potential exposure to the virus, how the patient's immune system responded, and overall, more about the virus itself. We know our teams here always rise to the challenge, and we know they’ll be ready to help in this next step to better understand COVID-19," thereby emphasizing the study's contribution to comprehending the efficacy and durability of infection-induced immunity; and

WHEREAS, a study published in July 2021 in Cell Reports Medicine demonstrated that immunity induced by natural infection with COVID-19 shows a significant level of durability, with the research indicating that key components of the immune response, including memory B cells, CD8+ T cells, and CD4+ T cells, remain robust and functional for an extended period post-infection, contributing to ongoing protection against the virus; and

WHEREAS, in July 2021, it had been a year since Sanford Health announced its critically important yearlong SURVIVE study; and

WHEREAS, on July 21, 2021, Senator Rand Paul issued a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging the Department of Justice to investigate testimony given by Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, alleging that Dr. Fauci's statements about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on May 11, 2021, may have violated federal law; and

WHEREAS, the implementation of vaccine mandates for SARS-CoV-2 was ethically underpinned by the belief, based on initial public health communications, that vaccines approved under Emergency Use Authorization would prevent infection and transmission, thus protecting not only the individual but also the broader community and contributing to the shortening of the pandemic by reducing the spread of the virus; and

WHEREAS, on July 22, 2021, Sanford Health officially announced a vaccine mandate requiring all employees within its medical facilities and Good Samaritan Society locations to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 1, 2021; and

WHEREAS, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stated, "It's been proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullshit, and they get vaccinated," as quoted in the book "Fauci" by Michael Specter, Pushkin Industries Publishing (2021); and

WHEREAS, on August 1, 2021, in an interview on 'Face the Nation,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Adviser to President Biden, acknowledged and stated that with the Delta variant of COVID-19, the level of virus in the nasopharynx of vaccinated individuals experiencing breakthrough infections is quite high and equivalent to the level of virus in the nasopharynx of unvaccinated individuals who are infected, thereby indicating that vaccinated people, despite their status, can have a similar viral load and potentially spread the virus to others as efficiently as those who are unvaccinated; and

WHEREAS, on August 24, 2021, as part of the Path Out of the Pandemic: President Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, in accordance with the Biden administration's directive, issued a memorandum mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for all members of the Armed Forces under Department of Defense authority, including active duty, National Guard, and Reserve components; and

WHEREAS, a significant study conducted by a highly credible team in Israel, titled "Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections," initially released as a preprint on August 25, 2021, and later published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 75, Issue 1, on July 1, 2022, involving 673,676 vaccinated individuals and 62,883 unvaccinated previously infected individuals, found that those with natural immunity were significantly less likely to contract the Delta variant, being almost six times less likely to get infected and seven times less likely to have symptomatic disease compared to those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine; and therefore, the preprint was available before the implementation of many vaccine mandates; and

WHEREAS, in September of 2021, President Biden mandated that all federal employees and contractors within the executive branch be vaccinated against COVID-19 but did not extend to members of Congress and their staff, nor to the judicial branch, adhering to constitutional separations of powers that prevent the imposition of such executive mandates on the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. Neither the House nor the Senate voted to enforce these mandates upon their respective members or their staff; and