The Trump administration replaced a COVID-19 resource site with a new design promoting the lab leak theory and bashing Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Previously, the same website, COVID.gov, was used to host guidance on masking and treatment options, including vaccines, and to order free test kits from the federal government.
The newly rolled-out web page features a movie poster-style graphic of President Donald Trump striding out in front of the words “Lab Leak” and subtext that states “the true origins of Covid-19.”
Experts are still divided over the origins of COVID, though the lab leak theory—which was once widely brushed off as a conspiracy theory by some health officials—has gained traction within the scientific community.
While it’s unlikely that the definitive origins of COVID will come to light, the White House is going all in on the lab leak theory with its new website—and accusing Fauci, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and a host of other actors of a cover-up.
The web page blames the National Institutes of Health for sending U.S. taxpayer money to EcoHealth, a research non-profit at the center of right-wingers’ concerns over bat virus research.
“After the Select Subcommittee [on the Coronavirus Pandemic] released evidence of EcoHealth violating the terms of its National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commenced official debarment proceedings and suspended all funding to EcoHealth,” the page states, before accusing NIH of having “deficient” and “unreliable” procedures for funding research.
In addition to Fauci and EcoHealth, the website tears into the World Health Organization for caving “to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party,” accuses the Biden administration of trying to obstruct the subcommittee’s work, and alleges Cuomo participated in “medical malpractice” in his handling of COVID in New York State.
The page concludes by deriding guidance on masking, social distancing, and lockdowns and blasting the Biden administration for “demoniz[ing] alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions.”
While COVID continues to infect people in the U.S., the right has essentially deemed the federal response to it over.
However, anticipating a fight over the country’s handling of the pandemic, Biden pardoned Fauci in one of his last acts in office.
The site highlights the text of Fauci’s pardon, to insinuate guilt, mentioning that it covers “any offense” the former infectious disease expert may have committed.
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