As The U.S. Prepares For COVID-19 Disinformation Stokes Panic And Discord [Chinese Actors]

Forbes ^ | April 7, 2020 | Wayne Rash

[familyop]

The goal of this campaign was to downplay health risks across the American public, and to cast doubt on the critical warnings and directions given by the U.S. Government, state and local officials, public health agencies, and experts in the field.”...“This malicious content was seeded into public media in China, and within hours it was rapidly distributed by social media users who believed these narratives and then amplified them...Notably, many of those conspiracy sites are home-grown U.S. disinformation sites that were created for their creators’ own political agendas.

[familyop]

Looks like your guess was a good one.

[familyop]

The information was from organizations that study foreign/domestic misinformation campaigns. ...behind the link.

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the post. Seeing the behavior here on FR, it appears to have been a very successful military campaign.

“In a recent analysis of almost 50 million social media posts examined over a period of 20 days,” Khaled explained, “one of the core themes that was discovered is the delegitimization of news organizations and politicians in the weeks prior to the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold in the United States. The goal of this campaign was to downplay health risks across the American public, and to cast doubt on the critical warnings and directions given by the U.S. Government, state and local officials, public health agencies, and experts in the field.”

[noiseman]

”Seeing the behavior here on FR, it appears to have been a very successful military campaign.”

Appears the flubros may have been unwitting accomplices to the Chicom attempt to maximize death and destruction in the U.S.

[kaehurowing]

Wow and here I thought the disinformation campaigns were all just coming from the Democrat Party and their media.

[House Atreides]

“Appears the flubros may have been unwitting accomplices to the Chicom attempt to maximize death and destruction in the U.S.”
***************************************************
Really? IMHO, you are a major league Asshoe!

[familyop]

Small services and entertainment businesses might better prepare for the next disaster by avoiding high flooring costs (including lease, etc.), avoiding debts and beginning to save as advised by our forefathers (Greatest Generation and before).

[PsyCon]

What’s the opposite of a flu bro?

[PA Engineer]

What’s the opposite of a flu bro?

Taiwan.

[Mariner]

It’s far more likely the Chicoms adopted a cultural theme that was already extant. And sharply critical of the zeitgeist.

And is exploiting it to sew division and conflict.

This so all of us do not turn our gaze to them. All at once.

This shows they are desperately afraid.

Flubros are not accomplices and not traitors. But there’s some trash following them around.

[FreedomNotSafety]

“ Much of the disinformation we’ve seen is the classic scamming,” he added. Ellis said that this involves fake information that will then get people to fall for classic phishing attacks by promising a cure or other solution for the disease. Ellis said that one of the results of this disinformation is the panic buying that’s shown up in countries impacted by the coronavirus.”

Sounds like the response by Chicken Freepers.

[PA Engineer]

The Chicoms are very good at this. They know the propaganda only works on the feeble, gullible, suggestive, weak and authoritarian. They have a long track record at this. The Chicoms are very good at correcting the others. That is why "no one died" at Tiananmen Square.

This is the beginning of a war and China struck first with a weapon of mass destruction. The Flubros strike me as the modern version of Robert Henry Best.

[Black Agnes]

I pegged wumao over a month ago.

[PA Engineer]

Agreed. This is not going away. They need to adapt to a new new.

The financial reset happened overnight and people have not excepted it.

[PA Engineer]

Sounds like the response by Chicken Freepers.

Who are Chicken Freepers? I can tell by your screen name you are clueless about the difference between freedom and liberty.

[PA Engineer]

Ya did.

[FreedomNotSafety]

Sure. And muh Russia got Trump elected. If the Chinese thought they were making us not believe our media and politicians then they wasted their money because we already knew that!

If they seek to alter elections just who were they trying to help?

[noiseman]

Look, questioning whether the virus casualty models were correct, and worrying about the damage being done to the economy to stop the virus’ spread are both completely valid concerns and items for debate. What has ticked me off is many on here who seem to have just casually blown the whole thing off as some kind of hoax, as if they knew more sitting on their couches than legions of medical experts in virtually every major country did. To say that that is HIGHLY unlikely is an understatement, and it makes us look like foolish conspiracy theorists.

Have the media and leftist politicians tried to amp up the fear-mongering and keep the crisis going in order to damage Trump? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean there is no crisis, and that it’s all fake. There’s a vast difference between the two.

There is no question this virus is unusually contagious and dangerous. I’ve seen some of the “flubros” now trying to use the fact that it appears that total deaths in the U.S. may end up much lower than earlier estimates to claim that this means the virus was overhyped and is nothing more than a run of the mill flu. I’m sorry, but that’s just foolish.

Do they stop to think that maybe, just maybe everyone being locked in their houses for a month just might have had something to do with those numbers being lower than expected? And that had we not done this we would likely have had a runaway situation just as predicted?

And finally, if as this story claims, the Chinese government has been trying to manipulate the American public to get them to disregard public warnings and safety measures (presumably to try to maximize the effects of the virus - a very believable scenario), then as I said those who just cavalierly blew off the whole thing like it was a joke certainly didn’t hurt the Chicoms’ disinformation campaign.

I just wish people would realize there’s a VAST difference between a real medical crisis that requires unprecedented mitigation efforts, even though it may be being used by the left to score political points, and instead just claiming because of that politicization that it’s all a hoax. The latter is patently foolish, and it doesn’t make us look very wise.

[Paladin2]

Data shows it’s not the same as the flu this year at least.

Next Year? Who [well NOT the UN WHO] knows?