The ancient Romans had a practice referred to as damnatio memoriae, a modern Latin term meaning “condemnation of memory.” It refers to the deliberate erasure of an individual’s presence from public memory, most famously practiced in ancient Rome but with roots and parallels in other ancient societies.
The phrase itself was not used by the Romans; it was coined by scholars in the 17th century to describe a practice typically enacted after a political figure—often an emperor—fell from favor, was overthrown, or died following a disgraceful reign.
We now have a pitch-perfect example of damnatio memoriae in the news today.
The federal website COVID.gov, which previously provided public health information about COVID-19—such as vaccine guidance, testing resources, and treatment options—has been fundamentally altered. As of this morning, the site now redirects users to a White House page that prominently promotes the theory that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, rather than from natural animal-to-human transmission.
…[T]he new White House page echoes a final report issued last year by the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, linked on the site. Republican members of the committee concluded last fall that the virus originated in a lab; Democrats issued a separate report that did not draw a definitive conclusion about the virus’ origins but also pressed for more transparency.The new White House site also details perceived failures of the Covid-19 response, including “lockdowns,” mask mandates, infectious disease research funding and HHS “obstruction” of those congressional probes.Some of those officials are named. A section of the page is dedicated to President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardon of retired National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The site contains much of the same information I have presented in the articles prepared for Legal Insurrection on the subject since my first post on a “strange pneumonia” in January of 2020. The updated White House website notes that the coronavirus was artificially created and leaked from a Wuhan infectious disease laboratory, describing the virus as exhibiting “a biological trait not found in nature” and claiming that evidence for a natural origin “would have emerged by now. But it hasn’t.”
What is most gratifying for me is the damnatio memoriae of Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This man took his position of public trust to promote a “preferred narrative” that the virus originated naturally, formed an alliance with Big Tech to silence critics on social media, and threatened the reputations of professional epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists who challenged his policy choices.
Biden’s pardon of Fauci is one of the highlights of the new webpage. It’s important to underscore that the pardon extends for 10 years because the current timeline suggests that Fauci and his team ignored the Obama administration’s 2014 restrictions on gain-of-function research, pausing federal funding for studies that enhance the transmissibility or virulence of pathogens.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that Fauci commissioned and finalized a scientific paper written in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab. The piece was entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”
Eventually, one of the authors who smeared the COVID lab leak hypothesis as a fringe conspiracy theory admitted they went ‘too far.’ The White House Lab Leak page highlights how this paper was abused.
“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 in nature.
It is especially fitting that COVID.gov now is being used to inform the public of Fauci’s true role in the creation of the virus, the manipulation of information to overstate the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission, analysis that exaggerated the risks COVID-19 posed to children, and a myriad of other contrivances that were damaging to both the nation and the rest of the world. COVID.gov was the go-to-spot when “fact-checkers” wanted to dismiss the reasonable challenges to the narrative by experienced professionals or those on social media who had experiences with the disease or the vaccine that didn’t align with Big Government or Big Pharma preferences.
I have one quibble with the “Lab Leak” webpage the White House has published: It needs more Dr. Deborah Birx. “Scarf Lady” teamed up with former Vice President Mike Pence to extend the lockdowns. She should really be a featured part of this timeline.
But as of right now, COVID.gov is a fitting homage to Fauci, who once declared that an attack on him was an attack on science.
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