from the how-useless dept
While I’m sure all of us would like to completely forget about COVID-19, it is simply the case that the virus hasn’t forgotten about us. Gone are the days of the pandemic, of course, so this isn’t meant to fear monger. But the fact is that hundreds of Americans are still dying of this disease every single week, with even more hospitalizations for it as well. The point is that this is still a health issue that healthcare providers, and the public, can benefit from guidance on. Guidance that was, in part, found at www.covid.gov, which earlier this month offered up information on treatments, vaccinations, testing, strategies to avoid infection, and so on.
But now that page is gone. Instead, it redirects to a White House site that appears to be someone’s interpretation of a Donald Trump personal vendetta and conspiracy blog about the origins of the virus and how much Anthony Fauci sucks and just might be the devil.
Navigating to COVID.gov brings up a slick site with rich content that lays out arguments and allegations supporting a lab-based origin of the pandemic and subsequent cover-up by US health officials and Democrats.
While there remains no definitive answer on how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the scientific data available on the topic points to a spillover event from a live wild animal market in Wuhan, China. The scientific community largely sees this as the most likely scenario, given the data so far and knowledge of how previous outbreak viruses originated, including SARS-CoV-1. By contrast, the lab origin hypothesis largely relies on the proximity of a research lab to the first cases, conjecture, and distrust of the Chinese government, which has not been forthcoming with information on the early days of the health crisis. Overall, the question of SARS-CoV-2’s origin has become extremely politicized, as have most other aspects of the pandemic.
Now, I want to be very clear about something: I referred to the lab leak theory as a conspiracy in the title of this post not as a derogatory term, but because that is what is being alleged. The theory is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that the leak was covered up by any number of individuals, depending on which version of the theory you believe. The fact is that the origin of the disease is not known as a matter of certainty and some number of intelligence groups and others suspect it leaked from a lab. Nobody should really care what I think about matters of healthcare, but I don’t view the theory that this disease may have leaked from a lab particularly unworthy of consideration, if not further study.
Which is entirely besides the damned point. The government site was meant to be a resource for healthcare providers and the public to help stay informed and combat this ongoing disease. There was no reason to do away with that guidance. If the current Trump administration, with its brand new and very incompetent head of HHS, RFK Jr., wanted to alter some of the guidance on the site, they were free to do so. This is something else, repurposing a tool for the public into Trump’s personal vendetta machine.
It’s not just a problem for those looking for information of the kind that used to be on the site. The other issue here is that the redirected site makes some very bold, very big claims about COVID-19. I’m not going to go through them one by one, nor am I going to attempt to debunk any of the claims. I would suggest only that you look at it through the eyes of someone looking for science or healthcare and is instead met with claims about both that are neither. Here is just one statement made near the top of the page:
By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.
By nearly all measures of science, a statement like that is completely antithetical to science. I don’t even need to go try to uncover the source of the statement to know one simple thing: that isn’t how scientists talk.
There have been more than enough actions taken in recent years that have promoted distrust of medicine, of science, and of experts. Actions like the above serve only to supercharge all of that distrust, further politicizing something that ought have no bearing in politics.
And, really, all that will do is spur on the next healthcare crises. Which, as we’ve been discussing, might already be beginning.
Filed Under: anthony fauci, covid, donald trump, lab leak, rfk jr.
