A glimpse into very coordinated and connected COVID conspiracy activity: Earlier today a paper was “published” by a group at the Rule of Law Society claiming evidence COVID was engineered in a lab. What is the Rule of Law Society? A non-profit operates by Steve Bannon

Bannon operates the non-profit with someone explicitly trying to undermine the communist Chinese government. In truth he appears to be a fraudster, like Bannon https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/politics/steve-bannon-guo-wengui/2020/09/13/8b43cd06-e964-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html%3FoutputType%3Damp

The lead author of the “study” is a self-proclaimed Chinese whistle blower about COVID. Within 12 hours of this “study” being posted on repository it was being covered by conspiracy faux-news sites. Her Wikipedia page was also quickly heavily edited to include this new “study”

From there the story was quickly picked up by the New York Post. By all accounts this study is complete fantasy and conspiracy. It cites other conspiracy work am includes huge unjustified leaps in logic and glaring omissions.

At the same time it is being systematically spread online and spun into a dissident narrative by inividuals and organizations explicitly trying to discredit China, ostensibly using this conspiracy theory to do so.

I find it pretty alarming how well coordinated & funded this conspiracy work is, especially as scientific institutions struggle to reach a distrustful public & maintain their credibility. I think we should pay more attention to where this work is coming from & how they’re working

Hey @IsabelOtt would you have the more specific scientific chops than me to pick some wild stuff from this?