These points are so wide and multi dimensionsal that one must really wonder whether they were looking for reasons for concern.
I'm not sure it's helpful to accuse "them" of bad faith, when "them" hasn't been defined and the post in question is a summary of reasons many individual people have expressed over time.
Let's put aside the fact that the person you replied to was trying to represent a diversity of views and not attribute them all to one individual, including the author of the article.
Should people not look for reasons to be concerned?