White House launches Covid website that slams Biden, Fauci and WHO
- 9 hours ago
Republican US President Donald Trump's White House launched a COVID-19 website on Friday in which it blamed the origins of the coronavirus on a lab leak in China while criticising Democratic former President Joe Biden, former top US health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization.
The website was also critical of steps like social distancing, mask mandates and lockdowns.
Trump began a 12-month process of withdrawing the US, by far the WHO's largest financial backer, from the agency when he took office in January.
Fauci, Biden and WHO had no immediate comment.
Soon after taking office, Trump also said that Fauci, who has faced threats since leading the country's COVID-19 response, should hire his own security and ended US security for him.
A CIA spokesperson said in January that the CIA has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature. The CIA had said it had "low confidence" in its assessment and that both scenarios – lab origin and natural origin – remain plausible.
China's government says it supports and has taken part in research to determine COVID-19's origin, and has accused Washington of politicising the matter, especially because of efforts by US intelligence agencies to investigate.
Beijing has said there was no credibility to claims that a laboratory leak likely caused the pandemic.
US agencies support lab-leak theory
The Covid.gov website, previously focused on promoting vaccine and testing information, now includes a full-length image of President Donald Trump and criticises the pandemic policies implemented under former president Joe Biden.
The site also targets Anthony Fauci for advancing what it calls the "preferred narrative that Covid-19 originated naturally."
It presents five bullet points aimed at bolstering the lab leak theory, noting that Wuhan, the site of the first known coronavirus case, is also home to China's "foremost SARS research lab" and has a history of conducting research at "inadequate biosafety levels."
"By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn't," the website said.
The lab-leak theory, once dismissed as a conspiracy theory, has recently gained mainstream traction in the United States.
Even as the debate remains unresolved -- scientifically and politically -- US agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy have come out in support of the theory, albeit with varying levels of confidence.
Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency shifted its official stance on the virus's origin, saying that it was "more likely" leaked from a Chinese lab than transmission from animals.
The assessment drew criticism from China, which said it was "extremely unlikely" COVID-19 came from a laboratory.
Beijing also urged the United States to "stop politicising and instrumentalising the issue of origin-tracing."
The United States and China are currently locked in a major trade war, with Washington announcing on Thursday new port fees for Chinese-linked ships and increased tariffs for Chinese goods.
Mask, social distancing criticised
"I welcome all efforts to dig deeper," said Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in response to the revamped White House website.
"But it would be a terrible shame if such efforts distracted from essential work to help prevent further infections and treat people suffering from COVID-19 and long Covid," he told NPR.
The new site, which apparently seeks to redefine the political narrative about COVID-19, also criticised the mask and social distancing mandates introduced at the start of the pandemic in 2020. There is also a map of Wuhan that is animated to throb.
Under a section titled "COVID-19 misinformation," it also accused public health officials under the previous administration of demonising "alternative treatments" and colluding with social media companies to censor dissenting views about the pandemic – a charge frequently echoed by US conservatives.
The Biden administration has previously rejected the charge that it was suppressing or censoring conservative perspectives.
The website revamp comes after layoffs began earlier this month at major US health agencies, as the Trump administration embarks on a sweeping and scientifically contested restructuring that will cut 10,000 jobs.
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – who has alarmed health experts with his rhetoric downplaying the importance of vaccines – said the layoffs were part of a major reform of his department, aiming to refocus efforts on chronic disease prevention.
More than one million people died of COVID-19 and related illnesses in the United States, and millions more fell victim to the disease around the world.
Agencies