New White House website pushes COVID-19 lab leak theory
1 of 4 | The Trump administration’s new COVID-19 website draws attention to five points suggesting that the virus likely originated inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, rather than any natural origin. No consensus on the origin of COVID-19 has emerged since the virus spread worldwide in 2020. File Photo by Roman Pilipey/EPA-EFE
The federal government’s covid.gov website has been replaced with a new page promoting the narrative the virus was manufactured in and was released from a Chinese lab.
“A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely the origin of COVID-19. Current government mechanisms for overseeing this dangerous gain-of-function research are incomplete, severely convoluted, and lack global applicability,” reads the new White House page entitled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19.”
The previous website provided people with information about vaccines, where to obtain free COVID-19 tests and facts about related health issues stemming from the virus, among other things.
The new site seeks to discredit the National Institutes of Health’s narrative under former President Joe Biden and his chief medical officer and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated in nature,” reads the new website.
Under the Biden administration, the official position was that the respiratory virus likely had a natural origin.
There has never been a complete consensus on the origins COVID-19 with supporters of both theories dug in on either side.
The Trump administration’s new website draws attention to five points, including suggesting that any natural origin would have since been pinned down.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t,” reads the website.
It suggests the virus likely originated inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
“[Wuhan] researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market,” reads the website.
The new site also draws into question an academic paper published in 2020.
Fauci contributed as an editor and was a proponent of the journal article, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.”
The U.S. intelligence community remains divided on the origins of the virus, that caused a global pandemic.
A 2021 report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence favored the natural origin theory but had dissenters.
Neither the NIH or Fauci had commented publicly as of 2 p.m. EDT Saturday.
“Glad to see the White House is finally acknowledging what’s been obvious for years. Next step is to acknowledge the injuries caused by the COVID injection so that the injured can get helped and treated,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wrote on X.