“The Trump administration has replaced the government’s main portal for information about COVID with a website arguing that the coronavirus leaked from a lab,” New York Times’ Benjamin Mueller reported on April 18. This is despite the theory not having been backed by evidence.
“‘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 naturally,” the redirect landing page for Covid.gov and Covidtests.gov states.
Dr. Fauci is not the only one being publicly criticized on the government’s website. The World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the New York Executive Chamber, EcoHealth, and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are also mentioned.
NPR’s Rob Stein wrote, “Federal agencies have issued conflicting reports about the origins of the pandemic, and a House investigation that concluded last December found that 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.”
Mueller noted that the administration’s purging of the old COVID-19 websites reflects a broader practice of officials recently scrapping health websites.
