A federal website sharing public health information about COVID-19 vaccines, treatment and testing has been replaced with one dedicated to theories about “the true origins of Covid-19” and scrutiny of past health officials’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
COVID.gov’s dramatic reboot Friday has the site now featuring a photo of President Donald Trump with the words “LAB LEAK.” Below it lists sweeping allegations of government obstruction and cover-ups on the virus, which it states “most likely” came from a laboratory in China.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t,” states the website, which was previously listed as overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
A White House spokesperson in an email to HuffPost on Friday declined to say where the public should now go for health information and recommendations on COVID-19.
Spokesman Kaelan Dorr, in an apparent response to a question asking about the website’s purpose or goal, vowed that the Trump administration “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,” Dorr said.
A spokesperson with the Department of Health and Human Services told HuffPost that it defers comment to the White House.
The CIA in late January said that it believes the virus most likely originated from a lab, an assessment that it said was made with “low confidence.” This conclusion followed President Joe Biden’s administration requesting a fresh review during its final weeks.
In addition to questioning the virus’ origins, the site criticizes past recommendations and orders on social distancing, mask mandates and lockdowns enacted during the pandemic, calling them unnecessary and damaging to the U.S. economy and “mental and physical health of Americans.”
Studies have shown that those measures drastically reduced the spread of the disease that has killed more than 1.2 million Americans since January 2020.
The website specifically targets former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as both Trump and Biden’s chief medical adviser.
The website, at its worst, says Fauci helped “push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally” and scrutinizes a presidential pardon he was later granted by then-President Joe Biden.
Trump, while in office, routinely butted heads with Fauci and other federal health officials who pushed back against his suggested medical treatments and public responses to the health emergency. Trump promoted unproven treatments for the virus as “cures” and even once suggested injecting bleach as a treatment during a press briefing.
A 2020 study by Cornell University found Trump to be “the largest driver” of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
Trump’s current health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also promoted COVID-19 conspiracy theories before being tapped to oversee the nation’s health department.
In 2023, Kennedy reportedly was heard suggesting that the coronavirus could have been genetically engineered by the Chinese to target certain races.
“They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race,” he said of the Chinese, according to the New York Post.