White House pushes COVID lab leak theory with new website
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Merline Jimenez (2nd R) administers a COVID-19 nasopharyngeal swab to a person at a testing site at Los Angeles International Airport amid a surge in omicron variant cases in December 2021 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Trump administration recast the White House's COVID information website on Friday to declare a virus leaking from a Chinese lab as the "true origins" of the pandemic.
Why it matters: President Trump has pushed the lab leak theory since 2020 when he downplayed masking, testing and other measures to prevent the spread of COVID during his first term while his approval rating cratered.
- Experts say the continued debate over whether the virus jumped from animals to humans or spread after a lab accident distracts from preventing both scenarios from occurring in the future.
Driving the news: "By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced," the White House website said. "But it hasn't."
Zoom in: The website alleges with no evidence that the Biden administration "engaged in a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion and non-responsiveness" to hide evidence.
- It also said the World Health Organization's response to the pandemic was an "abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China's political interests ahead of its international duties."
- The website criticizes Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for pushing a "preferred narrative."
- Fauci denied suppressing evidence for the lab leak theory during House testimony last year.
- Members of the Biden administration couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Context: The COVID origins debate has featured two theories: that the virus originated naturally from a market in Wuhan, China, or that it came from a lab leak there.
- The lack of evidence pointing to a direct transmission route from animals to humans has lead to differing interpretations of the same information.
- And the lab leak theory has been driven, in part, because the Wuhan Institute of Virology had biosafety problems that were chronicled in U.S. government messages, administrative reports an d in academic publications.
Yes, but: The lab leak theory was initially dismissed by many scientists and U.S. government officials and spread mainly by China critics, including Trump.
- The presence of a mutation known as a "furin cleavage site" on COVID's spike protein has long divided scientists over the question of whether it occurs naturally or was somehow engineered in a lab.
The latest: The CIA early this year concluded with low confidence that a research-related origin of the pandemic was likelier than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting.
- The conclusions came from a review ordered by the Biden administration but released by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who was appointed by Trump.
Between the lines: Supporters of the natural spillover theory say that, as was the case with the first SARS pandemic in 2003, COVID jumped from infected animals held at the Huanan wholesale market to humans at the end of 2019.
- Research in 2022 put some of the earliest human cases near part of the market where live animal vendors operated and where environmental samples positive for the virus were clustered.
- But the theory lacked samples from infected animals.
The White House website bashed mask mandates, lockdowns and six-foot distancing guidance.
- At a congressional hearing last year, Fauci clarified that the six-feet measure was based on years old studies, rather than a control trial justify it.
Go deeper: COVID's legacy: Public health's diminished power
Editor's note: Axios' Adriel Bettelheim contributed reporting.
