{"id":36650,"date":"2025-04-20T21:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T21:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/36650\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T21:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T21:49:08","slug":"trump-scraps-federal-covid-19-website-for-virus-lab-leak-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/36650\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump scraps federal COVID-19 website for virus lab-leak theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House replaced the federal government\u2019s longstanding hub for news and updates on COVID-19 with a website touting the lab leak theory that blames China for the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"play\"<\/p>\n

China vows to ‘fight to the end’ on President Trump’s tariffs<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump threatened China with more tariffs after they put a 34% tariff on U.S. imports.<\/p>\n

The federal government\u2019s online hub for news and information on COVID-19<\/a>, the disease that’s killed over a million Americans, now redirects to a new White House website that blames China for the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cLab leak,\u201d reads the banner on the website, \u201cthe true origins of COVID-19.\u201d President Donald Trump<\/a> has long touted the theory that the coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s changing of the online resource comes amid Trump\u2019s escalating trade war with China<\/a> and ongoing criticism of his predecessors. Dr. Anthony Fauci, former President Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s chief medical advisor, is also blamed at the top of the page for not supporting the lab leak theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s new COVID-19 website<\/a> features five arguments supporting the lab. Among them was the explanation that Wuhan \u2013 the Chinese city where the virus first began spreading \u2013 is home to a prominent virology lab.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The old website included information on vaccines, treatment and testing, according to archived versions. Among the resources was information on long COVID-19 and a link to order tests at home. It advised visitors on how soon to seek treatment and included guidance for people with medical conditions.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s new website also slams measures adopted by his predecessors, including social distancing, masking and lockdowns.<\/p>\n

It also says former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running for New York City mayor<\/a>, committed \u201cmedical malpractice\u201d in his handling of the pandemic. And the website says the World Health Organization\u2019s COVID-19 response was \u201can abject failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump began a 12-month process of withdrawing the U.S. – by far the WHO’s largest financial backer – from the agency when he took office in January.<\/p>\n

Fauci, Biden, Cuomo and WHO had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s new website comes after a modest endorsement of the lab leak theory from the Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n

In January, an agency spokesperson said that the CIA has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature but said that it had “low confidence” in the assessment and that a natural origin for COVID-19 remains plausible.<\/p>\n

China says it has taken steps to determine the virus\u2019 origin and has accused Americans of politicizing the matter, especially because of efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the cause.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Contributing by Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White House replaced the federal government\u2019s longstanding hub for news and updates on COVID-19 with a website…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[21090,21094,21088,21093,6890,5492,1395,1433,21092,1117,21091,5483,32,5491,5498,21089,105,725,3714,6889,714,6584,12,5179,6591,285,6886,7482,1093,7675,1757,49,978,659,7674,7681],"class_list":{"0":"post-36650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-andrew","9":"tag-andrew-cuomo","10":"tag-anthony","11":"tag-anthony-fauci","12":"tag-biden","13":"tag-branch","14":"tag-china","15":"tag-coronavirus","16":"tag-coronavirus-covid-19","17":"tag-covid-19","18":"tag-cuomo","19":"tag-donald","20":"tag-donald-trump","21":"tag-executive","22":"tag-executive-branch","23":"tag-fauci","24":"tag-health","25":"tag-health-news","26":"tag-house","27":"tag-joe","28":"tag-joe-biden","29":"tag-negative","30":"tag-news","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-negative","33":"tag-politics","34":"tag-presidential","35":"tag-public","36":"tag-public-health","37":"tag-residence","38":"tag-trump","39":"tag-united-states","40":"tag-us","41":"tag-usa","42":"tag-white","43":"tag-white-house-presidential-residence"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114372500785162674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}