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I'm not sure openly calling out other countries like this is really new. See for instance [1]: > By 1987, the Soviets began to sour on the campaign as Moscow’s

I'm not sure openly calling out other countries like this is really new. See for instance [1]: > By 1987, the Soviets began to sour on the campaign as Moscow’s scientific establishment rebuked it. Secretary of State George P. Shultz also accused Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was then the leader of the Soviet Union, with hawking “bum dope about AIDS.” Mr. Gorbachev ordered the K.G.B. to stop spreading the conspiracy theory and after the collapse of the bloc, former Soviet intelligence officials owned up to it. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/us/politics/russian-disinformation-aids-fake-news.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/us/politics/russian-disin...

meowface 6y ago
>hawking bum dope about AIDS Odd turn of phrase.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  They are referring to Operation Denver, a KGB plot to sow misinformation suggesting that AIDS was a US government conspiracy as early as 1983. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids-disinformation-campaign/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids...
  - meowface 6y ago
    Oh, I know, I just thought it was funny to refer to disinformation as "hawking bum dope". (Though this is a merging of the NYT's word and the quote.) Not really something anyone would say in modern American English.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
Ironic that nowadays the US government is the one promoting conspiracy theories about a pandemic. Even the theory is almost exactly the same: that the virus comes from a lab.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  You're taking about the assertion that the virus spread from an accidental contamination at a lab in Wuhan. It is crossing into conspiracy theory territory to believe the assertion without proof. However, the theory itself is completely reasonable and sound. This is an unproven claim; a conspiracy theory is something different.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    The theory is just as "reasonable" as the Soviet misinformation about HIV was. That is, not at all. It's a wildly implausible assertion that there's no evidence for. People outside of labs are exposed to bat coronaviruses all the time. The chances that one of a very small number of highly trained researchers working according to strict protocols was patient zero - as opposed to the millions of regular people who come into contact with bat coronaviruses with absolutely no protection or training - is minuscule. Just like the Soviet misinformation in the 1980s, the theory can't be disproven right now, in exactly the same way that any other malicious accusation made with zero evidence can't be disproven. The Trump administration is acting extremely recklessly by spreading this unsupported conspiracy theory.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      > implausible Explain the previous sars releases then.
      - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
        SARS spilled over naturally, not from a lab. After it spilled over naturally, it became the subject of intense study, sometimes in labs with poor procedures. Huge amounts of SARS-CoV were being cultured by people with little training. That's an entirely different circumstance from now. The lab where they study coronaviruses in Wuhan operates at a much higher standard than poorly run Chinese labs in 2004. The lab in Wuhan wasn't even conceived back then. It's essentially proven that SARS-CoV-2 was not under study before the outbreak, because the it's not in any of the standard databases where all known coronaviruses are published. But even disregarding that, the idea that huge quantities of a virus that nobody has ever heard of would be cultured is implausible.

meowface 6y ago

>hawking bum dope about AIDS Odd turn of phrase.

aspenmayer 6y ago
They are referring to Operation Denver, a KGB plot to sow misinformation suggesting that AIDS was a US government conspiracy as early as 1983. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids-disinformation-campaign/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids...
- meowface 6y ago
  Oh, I know, I just thought it was funny to refer to disinformation as "hawking bum dope". (Though this is a merging of the NYT's word and the quote.) Not really something anyone would say in modern American English.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

Ironic that nowadays the US government is the one promoting conspiracy theories about a pandemic. Even the theory is almost exactly the same: that the virus comes from a lab.

kspacewalk2 6y ago
You're taking about the assertion that the virus spread from an accidental contamination at a lab in Wuhan. It is crossing into conspiracy theory territory to believe the assertion without proof. However, the theory itself is completely reasonable and sound. This is an unproven claim; a conspiracy theory is something different.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  The theory is just as "reasonable" as the Soviet misinformation about HIV was. That is, not at all. It's a wildly implausible assertion that there's no evidence for. People outside of labs are exposed to bat coronaviruses all the time. The chances that one of a very small number of highly trained researchers working according to strict protocols was patient zero - as opposed to the millions of regular people who come into contact with bat coronaviruses with absolutely no protection or training - is minuscule. Just like the Soviet misinformation in the 1980s, the theory can't be disproven right now, in exactly the same way that any other malicious accusation made with zero evidence can't be disproven. The Trump administration is acting extremely recklessly by spreading this unsupported conspiracy theory.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > implausible Explain the previous sars releases then.
    - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
      SARS spilled over naturally, not from a lab. After it spilled over naturally, it became the subject of intense study, sometimes in labs with poor procedures. Huge amounts of SARS-CoV were being cultured by people with little training. That's an entirely different circumstance from now. The lab where they study coronaviruses in Wuhan operates at a much higher standard than poorly run Chinese labs in 2004. The lab in Wuhan wasn't even conceived back then. It's essentially proven that SARS-CoV-2 was not under study before the outbreak, because the it's not in any of the standard databases where all known coronaviruses are published. But even disregarding that, the idea that huge quantities of a virus that nobody has ever heard of would be cultured is implausible.