THE DEATH OF COVID.GOV: A FIVE-ALARM FIRE NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT

A critical look at how COVID.gov's erasure signals a dangerous shift in public health policy — and what we can do about it.

THEY’VE DISAPPEARED COVID.GOV, and I feel a mix of heartbreak and outrage.

COVID.gov wasn’t just another government website. It was a centralized hub of critical information — a lifeline for millions seeking testing locations, treatment options, vaccination sites, and up-to-date guidance during a global health crisis. For immunocompromised folks, elderly populations, and those with limited internet access, this website was often their primary connection to life saving public health resources. Its sudden disappearance **poof!** isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a deliberate severing of a crucial communication channel.

Yet, true to form, the media’s attention has already moved on. A story that should be a five-alarm fire has been reduced to a momentary headline, a fleeting outrage quickly forgotten. This is how normalization happens — not with a bang, but with a distracted scroll. We cannot let this become another footnote, another missed warning sign in our collective memory.

This isn’t just about a missing website. It’s about what that website represented: Our collective agreement that public health matters. That saving lives matters. That we, as a society, have a responsibility to each other.

While you’re reading this, someone with Long COVID is searching for resources that no longer exist. A family is trying to find out where to get tested. A newly infected person is looking for treatment options. What they’ll find instead? Trump plastered in front of the words LAB LEAK.

Please read that again.

The United States government has decided that political theater is more important than keeping people alive. They’ve replaced vital health resources with conspiracy-mongering about “True Origins” — a five-point manifesto of discredited narratives that even their own intelligence agencies have studied extensively and found implausible.

And it makes my blood boil and terrifies me all in one.

Because here is the bottom line: COVID EXISTS. It has *officially* killed more than 7 million people worldwide, with experts estimating the actual death toll could be between 19-36 MILLION when accounting for underreporting. It continues to kill people daily. It affects approximately 17 million American adults — one in ten who’ve had COVID — who are currently living with Long COVID symptoms that persist for months or years.

These aren’t just numbers.
They’re mothers, fathers, children, friends.

Lives utterly transformed or ended while a government website now tells us who to blame rather than how to protect ourselves and each other.

This isn’t just a website redesign. It’s a calculated political move in a time of escalating tariffs and geopolitical tension with China. It’s about creating a convenient villain, an “other” to point at while people continue to suffer and die.

And this abandonment of public health isn’t limited to COVID. The same systemic neglect that’s erasing COVID resources is now playing out with other preventable diseases. Look at what’s happening with measles right now — a stark illustration of how quickly hard-won public health gains can unravel when institutional support crumbles.

We’ve seen this pattern before, and it’s infuriating. More than 650 people infected across multiple states. Multiple unvaccinated people dead, including children. A preventable tragedy that our HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., initially dismissed as “not unusual.” Only after children died did he reluctantly acknowledge that vaccines might be worth considering — and even then, he framed it as a *personal decision* rather than an urgent public health measure.

I think about the parents who have lost children, who are watching their little ones suffer — all because an adult in power decided their narcissism was worth more than decades of science. All because a *liberty-based* system has failed its supposed fundamental duty: To protect people.

Want to know what an actual professional response to a measles outbreak looks like? Back in 2019, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar said: “We cannot say this enough: Vaccines are a safe and highly effective public health tool that can prevent this disease and end the current outbreak.”

No equivocation. No nonsense about cod liver oil or vitamin A. Just straightforward guidance that prioritized saving lives over political posturing.

The contrast to today is both heartbreaking and infuriating.

We’re witnessing the deliberate dismantling of public health infrastructure at the exact moment we need it most. This isn’t *just* about COVID or measles — it’s about creating an environment where future outbreaks flourish unchecked. When trusted information sources vanish and are replaced with politically motivated fuckery, where do people turn during the next pandemic?

For marginalized communities, the stakes are even higher. The same people who suffered disproportionately during the height of COVID — Black and Latino Americans, Indigenous populations, low-income families — will be the first to feel the impact of this abandonment. The same populations with reduced access to healthcare, who often live in more crowded housing, who can’t easily take time off work — they’re the ones being sacrificed while politicians play games with public health.

And I can’t stop thinking about the white supremacist wave that’s coming next — as the narrative shifts from protecting public health to scapegoating an entire population, setting the stage for a predictable and devastating rise in anti-Asian hatred. We know this script. They know this script. We’ve all seen this movie before, and it’s shameful that we’re willingly watching the sequel.

The human cost of this rhetoric is already documented: In 2021, Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339% nationwide compared to the year before. Stop AAPI Hate recorded more than 11,000 anti-Asian incidents between March 2020 and May 2023 — verbal harassment, physical violence, discrimination. About one-third of Asian adults say they personally know another Asian person who has been threatened or attacked since the pandemic began.

While reported incidents decreased somewhat in 2022, researchers described this as part of a “cyclical pattern” tied to rhetoric from leaders. When the U.S. government starts actively promoting anti-China narratives again, people will be attacked simply for “looking Chinese.” Children will be bullied in schools. Hatred will be normalized, starting with a government website and ending with violence in our streets.

The measles outbreak shows us exactly what happens when public health becomes politicized. Vaccine hesitancy, fueled by misinformation and conflicting guidance from authorities, creates gaps in immunity. Those gaps become gateways for preventable diseases to surge back into communities. What starts as a few cases in a remote area can quickly spread to urban centers, schools, daycares, and hospitals.

The pattern is predictable and devastating: First comes the erosion of trust, then the decline in vaccination rates, then the outbreaks, and finally the deaths — deaths that fall hardest on the most vulnerable among us. Children too young to be vaccinated. The elderly. The immunocompromised. The medically underserved.

We had effectively eliminated measles from the U.S. by 2000. Now it’s back, killing American children in 2025. How long before other vaccine-preventable diseases follow the same path? How long before COVID surges again, but this time without centralized resources to help people access treatment or testing?

But we don’t have to merely accept this as inevitable. I refuse to believe we’re powerless in this moment. When institutions fail us, we still have each other. Communities have always found ways to protect their own, especially when governments abdicate responsibility. That’s where hope lives — in our collective power to care for one another.

So what do we do in the face of this institutional abandonment? We get to work in our own communities.

• Get vaccinated. Take responsibility for your own health and that of your community. Make sure your vaccinations are fully up to date — COVID boosters, MMR, everything. If you have children, vaccinate them. The temporary discomfort of a shot is nothing compared to the suffering of measles or COVID — or the grief of losing someone you love to a preventable disease.

• Become a source of reliable information for your friends and family. Not everyone has the time or ability to sort through medical journals or track down archived resources. Be the person who helps others navigate an increasingly confusing landscape of health information. Host community information sessions. Create resource lists. Be the public health advocate your neighborhood needs.

• Document and share when you see public health resources disappearing or being replaced. Take screenshots. Use the Wayback Machine. Create community resources to fill the gaps left by our government’s failure. Build mutual aid networks to support those with long COVID, those who need help accessing vaccines, those who need reliable information. The solutions are in our hands.

• Build alternative information networks. Start local COVID support groups. Create neighborhood resource guides. Develop multilingual information packets about testing, treatment, and long COVID support.

• Support grassroots health initiatives. Donate to and volunteer with community health organizations. Support clinics serving marginalized communities. Help fund mobile testing and vaccination efforts.

• Keep wearing masks. They’re not just a personal choice — they’re an act of community care. Masks continue to be an effective tool in preventing the spread of COVID and other respiratory diseases. Wear them in crowded spaces, around vulnerable populations, and when you’re feeling unwell. Your mask protects not just you, but those around you who may be immunocompromised or at higher risk. It’s a simple act of solidarity, a tangible way of saying, “I care about your health as much as my own.”

What’s happening with COVID.gov isn’t just about a website.

It’s about a systematic effort to replace science with ideology.
It’s about a systematic effort to stoke xenophobia.
It’s about a systematic effort to deflect and blame.
It’s about abandoning the most vulnerable among us while pretending to have their interests at heart.

But we don’t have to accept that abandonment as the final word.

We can build something better, together. We can protect each other. And in doing so, we might just create the kind of community-centered public health system we’ve always deserved.