‘Lab Leak,’ a flashy page on the virus’ origins, replaces government COVID sites

The White House has taken down some government websites providing COVID-19 information and replaced them with a new boldly styled page dedicated to the controversial theory that the pandemic was caused by the virus leaking from a Chinese government laboratory.

The original federal websites, covid.gov and covidtests.gov, had provided the public with basic information about COVID-19, such as vaccines, treatment and testing. But those sites now redirect people to a new page, titled: “Lab Leak. The True Origins of COVID-19.”

The lab leak theory argues that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, China, and then spread around the world.

Federal agencies have issued conflicting reports about the origins of the pandemic and a House investigation concluded last December said a lab leak is the most likely scenario. But many scientists think it’s more likely the virus originated naturally in a wild animal and then spilled over into people in a wildlife market located in Wuhan.

The new page, which features a full-color image of President Trump superimposed over giant text of the words “Lab Leak,” criticizes the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic, including promoting masks, lockdowns and social distancing.

“Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency,” the White House site says. “Most egregiously, the federal government demonized 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.”

It also singles out Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic, and President Biden’s decision to pardon him. Fauci became a hero to many during the pandemic, but was also vilified for his role in the government’s response.

In response to NPR’s question about why covid.gov and covidtests.gov redirect to the newly launched page and what will happen to the information that was available on the now defunct pages, White House spokesperson Kaelan Dorr said via email:

“The Trump administration has been very clear that, in contrast to the previous administration, we WILL be the most transparent administration in U.S. history. Nothing will stop us from innovating and finding creative ways to uphold our end of the bargain.”

In an email to NPR, Jamie Metzl, a critic of the wildlife spillover theory expressed mixed reaction to the new website.

“As someone who has pushed for a full accounting for COVID-19 origins since early 2020, I welcome all efforts to dig deeper,” wrote Metzl, who is a fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of books on genetics and technology and has been an outspoken critic of the market-origin hypothesis.

“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,” Metzl wrote.

Some scientists were critical of the new site, which they say appears political in intent.

The website presents five bullet points in favor of the lab leak theory. None of them are new, noted Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

“Every one of the five pieces of evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis … is factually incorrect, embellished, or presented in a misleading way,” Rasmussen wrote in an email.

“But making evidence-based arguments in good faith about the pandemic’s origin is not the purpose of this document. This is pure propaganda, intended to justify the systematic devastation of the federal government, particularly programs devoted to public health and biomedical research,” Rasmussen added.

Other scientists said the web site doesn’t follow the existing body of scientific evidence on the issue. That evidence does not support “any of the many, often contradictory, lab leak scenarios that have been proposed,” Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, in an email to NPR.

He argued that the evidence is consistent with “the less flashy hypothesis that bringing live animals infected with pathogens with pandemic potential into the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world was how this pandemic started.”

He added: “It is a matter of national, and global, security to understand how risky such practices remain, and the next pathogen with pandemic potential will find us easy pickings if we don’t appreciate how risky this sort of ‘biosafety level zero’ activity is.”

House Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the committee that conducted the recently concluded investigation into COVID’s origins, praised the Trump White House for creating the new site.

“President Trump is rightfully providing the American people with the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement.