WATCH: Wenstrup says COVID response should have been 'more precise,' more honest about the unknown

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said government officials and politicians during the COVID-19 pandemic "should have been more precise" and that "we should have been honest, especially about what we didn't know."

The statements came during his opening remarks Monday for the House Oversight and Reform Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Wenstrup, a doctor of podiatry, chairs the committee, which called Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases who headed up much of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to testify. Wenstrup said that Americans were "aggressively bullied, shamed and silenced for merely questioning or debating issues, such as social distancing, masks, vaccines or the origins of COVID."

Wenstrup thanked Fauci for sitting for "more than 14 hours of testimony" before the subcommittee so far but said, "America cannot move forward, though, without looking back."

The hearing was the latest effort among Republicans to question the U.S. response to the pandemic, including how pandemic prevention plans were created and communicated. Monday's session was in part focused on the origins of the pandemic and the nation's role in virus research in China. There are a number of theories about how COVID's spread began, including a natural jump from animals to humans and a laboratory leak. Intelligence assessments on how the virus began are inconclusive

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