The White Home just lately launched an online 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 info and changed them with a brand new boldly styled web page devoted to the controversial principle that the pandemic was brought on by the virus leaking from a Chinese language authorities laboratory.
The authentic federal web sites, covid.gov and covidtests.gov, had offered the general public with primary details about COVID-19, reminiscent of vaccines, therapy and testing. However these websites now redirect folks to a 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 info web page, documented right here by way of webarchive.org.
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The lab leak principle 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 all over the world.
Federal companies 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 certainly state of affairs. However many scientists assume it is extra probably the virus originated naturally in a wild animal after which spilled over into folks in a wildlife market situated in Wuhan.
The brand new web page, which encompasses 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 an absence of transparency,” the White Home web site says. “Most egregiously, the federal authorities demonized different remedies and disfavored narratives, such because the lab leak principle, in a shameful effort to coerce and management the American folks’s well being selections.”
It additionally singles out Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses throughout the pandemic, and President Biden’s determination to pardon him. Fauci turned a hero to many throughout the pandemic, however was additionally vilified for his position within the authorities’s response.
A part of the Lab Leak webpage consists of feedback crucial of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead a lot of the federal government’s COVID response throughout Trump’s first presidency and below Biden.
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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 knowledge that was obtainable on the now defunct pages, White Home spokesperson Kaelan Dorr mentioned by way of electronic 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 discount.”
In an electronic mail to NPR, Jamie Metzl, a critic of the wildlife spillover principle 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 expertise 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 forestall additional infections and deal with folks affected by COVID-19 and lengthy COVID,” Metzl wrote.
Some scientists have been crucial of the brand new web site, which they are saying seems political in intent.
The web site presents 5 bullet factors in favor of the lab leak principle. 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 approach,” Rasmussen wrote in an electronic mail.
“However making evidence-based arguments in good religion concerning the pandemic’s origin will not be the aim of this doc. That is pure propaganda, meant to justify the systematic devastation of the federal authorities, notably packages dedicated to public well being and biomedical analysis,” Rasmussen added.
Different scientists mentioned the site would not observe the prevailing physique of scientific proof on the problem. That proof doesn’t assist “any of the numerous, usually contradictory, lab leak situations which have been proposed,” Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist on the College of Arizona, in an electronic mail to NPR.
He argued that the proof is in line with “the much less flashy speculation that bringing reside 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 following pathogen with pandemic potential will discover us straightforward pickings if we do not admire how dangerous this form of ‘biosafety degree zero’ exercise is.”
Home Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the committee that performed the just lately concluded investigation into COVID’s origins, praised the Trump White Home for creating the brand new web site.
“President Trump is rightfully offering the American folks with the reality concerning the COVID-19 pandemic,” he mentioned in a assertion.
