6 ms·

Not to ad hom the piece, but Miles Guo, funder of this work, is a controversial Steve Bannon associate and Chinese billionaire in exile. So, you know, might ha

Not to ad hom the piece, but Miles Guo, funder of this work, is a controversial Steve Bannon associate and Chinese billionaire in exile. So, you know, might have an axe to grind. Also, for a different, and published, perspective, see this piece: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

_cs2017_ 6y ago
Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare. He also made many other interesting claims: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-tied-to-steve-bannon-is-writing-fake-news-about-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-t... It's hard to doubt Miles Guo's credibility: it is as solid a zero as they come. To be fair, it's not like he's the only one who spends money to publish lies to brainwash people. Nearly every political party and government does that, although only select few would lie to such an extreme degree.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China... If that is true, your source doesn't show it. It says that a media outlet owned by Guo reported that "the Chinese government prepared to admit that the virus came from a lab". Not that it was engineered, not that it was intentionally released and certainly not as biologicial warfare to defeat the US (somehow by releasing it inside China).
- balola 6y ago
  Guo has come out with almost no credile exposé anout the CCP despite repeatedly promising never-before-seen mega ones. Some of his followers did provide sensitive infos to him and quickly landed themselves on national television and jails. Conspiracy theories have since been his only hobby beside bodybuilding and preaching on his yacht.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  > Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare Such an assertion is well within the bounds for what should be considered possible. China's style of governance lends itself very well to extinguishing epidemics (namely, they can take swift and decisive action), so it's not a stretch to imagine that they would be affected by the outcome less than the USA in the longer term.
dfischer 6y ago
That’s enough to cause a leak in facts in my book. The straw that broke the camels back.
djaque 6y ago
That's not even ad hominem. It's a pretty relevant piece of info and does change how I look at the article.
- pldr2244 6y ago
  It is quite literally the definition of an ad hominem attack. But to continue the ad hominem attacks then: I would err on the side of caution in believing anything that exonerates China.
mathw 6y ago
I'll definitely take the paper from Nature Medicine over the article by someone associated with Steve Bannon. I simply do not believe it is plausible that this many scientists are in on the massive cover-up that would be required to hide such evidence.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Wait, you don't think people in China would be afraid of outing their government's nefarious deeds? Even in the U.S. our whistleblowers like Snowden have to run to Russia and face exile at best. How many people work in the NSA that could have said something but didn't? Now add that China isn't afraid to jail hundreds of thousands of people if it has to to get compliance. It's not afraid to harvest the organs of prisoners either. Add that they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall.
  - roca 6y ago
    The conspiracy theory presented in this paper is that mainstream medical journals around the world are "strictly censoring" evidence that COVID19 was developed in a lab.
    - drran 6y ago
      Yep. It's strictly censored by everybody around the globe. Nobody wants to see scientists hanging on trees.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall. I think you have a bit of an idealized perception of the Great Firewall if you think it allows controlling all communication. That's certainly the goal, but in practice, the implementation is far from achieving it. Well-known historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests can be censored because they're so well known, so the censors know what kind of content to block. (But people who want to talk about them anyway also know which keywords to avoid to evade censorship. It's a cat-and-mouse game.) New scandals become known all the time and cannot be censored until the news has spread far enough to reach the censors. For example, when Li Wenliang warned his friends about SARS infections in his hospital, the censors didn't know they had to censor screenshots of that conversation or his name until it was too late. When Ai Fen gave an interview to Renwu, the censors didn't know they had to censor it until it was too late. In the end, the Chinese government had to honor Li Wenliang as a martyr and Ai Fen as a hero to somewhat calm the waves of public opinion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to successfully suppress the information if the virus was lab-made and someone blew the whistle on that.
gridlockd 6y ago
That's worth noting, but if we were to apply that metric to dismiss a piece of scientific work, we would also have to dismiss anything coming out of Chinese state-controlled research labs for being biased. After all, who would fund such research? Certainly not a pro-CCP entity. There is no such thing as an unbiased source, especially with anything concerning China. If the scientific arguments presented hold ground, it shouldn't matter who authored them, and if the authors are so biased that they provably gave up on scientific principles, that should suffice to discredit the work.
mkborregaard 6y ago
Miles Guo is also part of Trump's Mar-el-Lago resort

_cs2017_ 6y ago

Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare. He also made many other interesting claims: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-tied-to-steve-bannon-is-writing-fake-news-about-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/a-site-t... It's hard to doubt Miles Guo's credibility: it is as solid a zero as they come. To be fair, it's not like he's the only one who spends money to publish lies to brainwash people. Nearly every political party and government does that, although only select few would lie to such an extreme degree.

gridlockd 6y ago
> Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China... If that is true, your source doesn't show it. It says that a media outlet owned by Guo reported that "the Chinese government prepared to admit that the virus came from a lab". Not that it was engineered, not that it was intentionally released and certainly not as biologicial warfare to defeat the US (somehow by releasing it inside China).
balola 6y ago
Guo has come out with almost no credile exposé anout the CCP despite repeatedly promising never-before-seen mega ones. Some of his followers did provide sensitive infos to him and quickly landed themselves on national television and jails. Conspiracy theories have since been his only hobby beside bodybuilding and preaching on his yacht.
selfhoster11 6y ago
> Not only that, but Miles Guo claimed that the virus was intentionally released by China to defeat America via biological warfare Such an assertion is well within the bounds for what should be considered possible. China's style of governance lends itself very well to extinguishing epidemics (namely, they can take swift and decisive action), so it's not a stretch to imagine that they would be affected by the outcome less than the USA in the longer term.

dfischer 6y ago

That’s enough to cause a leak in facts in my book. The straw that broke the camels back.

djaque 6y ago

That's not even ad hominem. It's a pretty relevant piece of info and does change how I look at the article.

pldr2244 6y ago
It is quite literally the definition of an ad hominem attack. But to continue the ad hominem attacks then: I would err on the side of caution in believing anything that exonerates China.

mathw 6y ago

I'll definitely take the paper from Nature Medicine over the article by someone associated with Steve Bannon. I simply do not believe it is plausible that this many scientists are in on the massive cover-up that would be required to hide such evidence.

chrisco255 6y ago
Wait, you don't think people in China would be afraid of outing their government's nefarious deeds? Even in the U.S. our whistleblowers like Snowden have to run to Russia and face exile at best. How many people work in the NSA that could have said something but didn't? Now add that China isn't afraid to jail hundreds of thousands of people if it has to to get compliance. It's not afraid to harvest the organs of prisoners either. Add that they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall.
- roca 6y ago
  The conspiracy theory presented in this paper is that mainstream medical journals around the world are "strictly censoring" evidence that COVID19 was developed in a lab.
  - drran 6y ago
    Yep. It's strictly censored by everybody around the globe. Nobody wants to see scientists hanging on trees.
- yorwba 6y ago
  > they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall. I think you have a bit of an idealized perception of the Great Firewall if you think it allows controlling all communication. That's certainly the goal, but in practice, the implementation is far from achieving it. Well-known historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests can be censored because they're so well known, so the censors know what kind of content to block. (But people who want to talk about them anyway also know which keywords to avoid to evade censorship. It's a cat-and-mouse game.) New scandals become known all the time and cannot be censored until the news has spread far enough to reach the censors. For example, when Li Wenliang warned his friends about SARS infections in his hospital, the censors didn't know they had to censor screenshots of that conversation or his name until it was too late. When Ai Fen gave an interview to Renwu, the censors didn't know they had to censor it until it was too late. In the end, the Chinese government had to honor Li Wenliang as a martyr and Ai Fen as a hero to somewhat calm the waves of public opinion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to successfully suppress the information if the virus was lab-made and someone blew the whistle on that.

gridlockd 6y ago

That's worth noting, but if we were to apply that metric to dismiss a piece of scientific work, we would also have to dismiss anything coming out of Chinese state-controlled research labs for being biased. After all, who would fund such research? Certainly not a pro-CCP entity. There is no such thing as an unbiased source, especially with anything concerning China. If the scientific arguments presented hold ground, it shouldn't matter who authored them, and if the authors are so biased that they provably gave up on scientific principles, that should suffice to discredit the work.

mkborregaard 6y ago

Miles Guo is also part of Trump's Mar-el-Lago resort