Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Just to throw another angle on it, I think the committee is master of its own business. We can do whatever we want, so we can certainly issue a report if we want. Customarily, a briefing is very different from a study and a report. We received a briefing today. That was a briefing for us as members of this committee. I didn't anticipate a report would come out of it.
Generally, when we say we want a briefing, it's to receive a briefing. When we undertake a study, generally it's to study in depth, hear from a variety of perspectives, and issue a report. The reason I think that distinction might be helpful....
I have two concerns about issuing a report based on today. Number one is that we did not have a comprehensive series of witnesses. We had two government agencies. Typically, in a study that results in a report you have a wide variety of witnesses from a wide variety of perspectives. Maybe there are epidemiologists or people working in disease control that would take issue with what was heard today. I don't know, but maybe that's the case.
Second, I'm really concerned because much of what I heard today mirrors what I heard on Friday, which is that the information on this is changing—and we heard it here—daily, maybe even weekly. By the time we write our report and get our recommendations, for all I know the gestation period for the virus in semen could be found to be.... As I said, I heard 62 days, and 14 days here today, so I'd be very concerned about this committee putting out a report based on one day of testimony from two government agencies without testing information on something that we know is a highly labile, fast-changing subject.
Now, we could write a report with that in mind—