The White Home not too long ago launched an internet web page entitled: “Lab Leak. The True Origins of COVID-19”
Whitehouse.gov/screenshot by NPR
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Whitehouse.gov/screenshot by NPR
The White Home has taken down some authorities web sites offering COVID-19 data and changed them with a brand new boldly styled web page devoted to the controversial concept that the pandemic was brought on by the virus leaking from a Chinese language authorities laboratory.
The unique federal web sites, covid.gov and covidtests.gov, had offered the general public with primary details about COVID-19, resembling vaccines, remedy and testing. However these websites now redirect folks to a brand new web page, titled: “Lab Leak. The True Origins of COVID-19.”
One of many pages changed by the Lab Leak web site was this COVID-19 data web page, documented right here by way of webarchive.org.
webarchive.org/screenshot by NPR
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webarchive.org/screenshot by NPR
The lab leak concept argues that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese language authorities lab in Wuhan, China, after which unfold world wide.
Federal businesses have issued conflicting stories concerning the origins of the pandemic and a Home investigation that concluded final December discovered {that a} lab leak is the most definitely situation. However many scientists assume it is extra doubtless the virus originated naturally in a wild animal after which spilled over into folks in a wildlife market positioned in Wuhan.
The brand new web page, which incorporates a full-color picture of President Trump superimposed over big textual content of the phrases “Lab Leak,” criticizes the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic, together with selling masks, lockdowns and social distancing.
“Public well being officers usually mislead the American folks by way of conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a scarcity of transparency,” the White Home website says. “Most egregiously, the federal authorities demonized various remedies and disfavored narratives, such because the lab leak concept, in a shameful effort to coerce and management the American folks’s well being choices.”
It additionally singles out Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments through the pandemic, and President Biden’s resolution to pardon him. Fauci grew to become a hero to many through the pandemic, however was additionally vilified for his function within the authorities’s response.
A part of the Lab Leak webpage contains feedback vital of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead a lot of the federal government’s COVID response throughout Trump’s first presidency and beneath Biden.
Whitehouse.gov/screenshot by NPR
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Whitehouse.gov/screenshot by NPR
In response to NPR’s query about why covid.gov and covidtests.gov redirect to the newly launched web page and what is going to occur to the data that was accessible on the now defunct pages, White Home spokesperson Kaelan Dorr stated by way of e mail:
“The Trump administration has been very clear that, in distinction to the earlier administration, we WILL be essentially the most clear administration in U.S. historical past. Nothing will cease us from innovating and discovering artistic methods to uphold our finish of the cut price.”
In an e mail to NPR, Jamie Metzl, a critic of the wildlife spillover concept expressed combined response to the brand new web site.
“As somebody who has pushed for a full accounting for COVID-19 origins since early 2020, I welcome all efforts to dig deeper,” wrote Metzl, who’s a fellow on the Atlantic Council and the writer of books on genetics and know-how and has been an outspoken critic of the market-origin speculation.
“However it will be a horrible disgrace if such efforts distracted from important work to assist stop additional infections and deal with folks affected by COVID-19 and lengthy COVID,” Metzl wrote.
Some scientists had been vital of the brand new website, which they are saying seems political in intent.
The web site presents 5 bullet factors in favor of the lab leak concept. None of them are new, famous Angela Rasmussen, a virologist on the College of Saskatchewan in Canada.
“Each one of many 5 items of proof supporting the lab leak speculation … is factually incorrect, embellished, or introduced in a deceptive manner,” Rasmussen wrote in an e mail.
“However making evidence-based arguments in good religion concerning the pandemic’s origin shouldn’t be the aim of this doc. That is pure propaganda, supposed to justify the systematic devastation of the federal authorities, significantly applications dedicated to public well being and biomedical analysis,” Rasmussen added.
Different scientists stated the website online would not comply with the present physique of scientific proof on the difficulty. That proof doesn’t help “any of the numerous, usually contradictory, lab leak eventualities which were proposed,” Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist on the College of Arizona, in an e mail to NPR.
He argued that the proof is per “the much less flashy speculation that bringing stay animals contaminated with pathogens with pandemic potential into the guts of one of many largest cities on the earth was how this pandemic began.”
He added: “It’s a matter of nationwide, and world, safety to grasp how dangerous such practices stay, and the subsequent pathogen with pandemic potential will discover us straightforward pickings if we do not recognize how dangerous this kind of ‘biosafety degree zero’ exercise is.”
Home Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the committee that performed the not too long ago concluded investigation into COVID’s origins, praised the Trump White Home for creating the brand new website.
“President Trump is rightfully offering the American folks with the reality concerning the COVID-19 pandemic,” he stated in a assertion.
