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 concept that the pandemic was attributable to the virus leaking from a Chinese language authorities laboratory.
The unique federal web sites, covid.gov and covidtests.gov, had supplied the general public with fundamental details about COVID-19, equivalent to vaccines, remedy and testing. However these websites now redirect individuals 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 info 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 reviews concerning the origins of the pandemic and a Home investigation that concluded final December discovered {that a} lab leak is the almost definitely state of affairs. However many scientists assume it is extra seemingly the virus originated naturally in a wild animal after which spilled over into individuals in a wildlife market positioned 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 individuals via 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 concept, in a shameful effort to coerce and management the American individuals’s well being selections.”
It additionally singles out Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments in the course of the pandemic, and President Biden’s determination to pardon him. Fauci turned a hero to many in the course of the pandemic, however was additionally vilified for his function within the authorities’s response.
A part of the Lab Leak webpage contains feedback essential of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead a lot of the federal government’s COVID response throughout Trump’s first presidency and underneath 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’s going to occur to the data that was out there 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 probably 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 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 might be a horrible disgrace if such efforts distracted from important work to assist forestall additional infections and deal with individuals affected by COVID-19 and lengthy COVID,” Metzl wrote.
Some scientists had been essential 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 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 approach,” Rasmussen wrote in an electronic mail.
“However making evidence-based arguments in good religion concerning the pandemic’s origin is just not the aim of this doc. That is pure propaganda, supposed to justify the systematic devastation of the federal authorities, significantly packages dedicated to public well being and biomedical analysis,” Rasmussen added.
Different scientists mentioned the website online does not observe the prevailing 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 electronic mail to NPR.
He argued that the proof is in step with “the much less flashy speculation that bringing dwell animals contaminated with pathogens with pandemic potential into the guts of one of many largest cities on the planet 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 type 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 individuals with the reality concerning the COVID-19 pandemic,” he mentioned in a assertion.
