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I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I think the longest lasting legacy of covid will be the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
That started during Vietnam, we are still recovering.
Fordec 4y ago
Created? Please, it was already there. Gestures vaguely at every Libertarian, (Neo-)Luddite, Jenny Mccarthy and basically the city of Portland.
AustinDev 4y ago
I am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are figuring it out now. [1]: The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_and_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an...)
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  Indeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.
  - AustinDev 4y ago
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  - kodyo 4y ago
    Biden’s administration was ready to put people out of work if they didn’t get the shots. Red team vs blue team rhetoric is nauseating.
    - laidoffamazon 4y ago
      Indeed, I’m sure this would mean the current unemployment rate is far higher than it was in January 2021 no?
      - kodyo 4y ago
        The courts blocked the insanity.
        VagueMag 4y ago
        And they only did that because too large a proportion of workers showed the backbone necessary to lose their jobs and livelihoods in order to not take the shots. If the opposition had been something closer to 10% instead of 30% I think it's a good bet that the courts would have punted on the question. As someone who spent the fall and winter of 2021 checking my email each morning to see if my employer was initiating a mandate, I have a deep & abiding appreciation for all the brave resisters who paid a steep price to put these fascistic mandates on the ashheap of history where they always belonged.
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  - idgaf4u 4y ago
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    - mindslight 4y ago
      > This comment gets a lot up upvotes until it gets "flagged" and deleted This is because your comment is bog standard disinformation. It tickles the groupthink narrative about "lockdowns", even though "lockdowns" did not exist in the US beyond a few counties in California.
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        That's news to this Washington state resident, who couldn't eat indoors at restaurants or send my kids to in-person school through most of 2020.
        mindslight 4y ago
        Business and school closures are not lockdowns. The abuse of terminology for political purposes is at the heart of this inability to communicate (and both political machines are guilty). If you could legally leave your home (ie you were not subject to a stay at home order with the force of law), you were not "locked down".
        VagueMag 4y ago
        This is a bizarre definition completely at odds with the commonly understood meaning of "lockdowns" in the U.S.
        mindslight 4y ago
        "Commonly understood" by one political camp, which has hyperbolically defined terms to shore up the ranks. See my previous point. "Lockdown" evokes an idea of being uniformly unable to go out at all, which was most certainly not the case. Rather, the business and institutions that were closed were closed for specific reasons. For each venue we can debate those specific reasons - some were certainly ridiculously overbearing [0] - but grouping it all into "lockdowns" accomplishes nothing besides encouraging people talk past one another. [0] Non-controversial example: open air parks that were closed.
- kornhole 4y ago
  When secretive governments and corporations give stories that don't pass basic tests, our lives depend on finding the most likely truth. This is theorizing. If you don't think they are telling the full truth, you are a conspiracy theorist. I am proud to be one too.
  - malandrew 4y ago
    What people don’t get is that the opposite of conspiracy theorist is also a sort of theorist that chooses the prevailing narrative or status quo. A friend of mine coined the term complacency theorist.
- smohare 4y ago
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- dibt 4y ago
  > '2 weeks to slow the spread' Wasn't that to prevent over-crowding of hospitals? Were hospitals not over-crowded?
  - VagueMag 4y ago
    Aside from a few urban hospitals which were turned into COVID case dumping grounds in the early weeks, no, they weren't. Hospital employment tanked at the beginning of lockdowns and has only just recovered to pre-Covid levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001
    - dibt 4y ago
      It doesn't seem like you've said anything backed by facts. The number of employees in hospitals dropping at the start of the pandemic supports that hospitals were under extra stress. Also, it's logical to assume that a crowded and understaffed hospital is a bad place to be when there's an airborne disease spreading. Hard to argue against suggesting people do everything can to stay home for two weeks to not get a new under-researched disease in those conditions.
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        If these measures had actually lasted for only two weeks we'd hardly still be discussing them in the waning days of 2022.
        dibt 4y ago
        You're still in quarantine? The original comment I was replying to was implying 'two weeks to stop the spread' was a conspiracy. Nice to see people downvoting me for a reasonable comment, while I can't downvote them. Typical for HN. Feel free to downvote this one.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  The best part about being a conspiracy theorist is not having myocarditis.
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    Heart problems caused by the virus, especially if you haven't been vaccinated, are far more frequent and severe than from the vaccination. Our immune system is powerful and can hurt us all by itself; but it's powerful because it has to be.
    - mmcgaha 4y ago
      So in fairness, I am in no way anti-vax but I am not vaccinated and intend to ride out this whole unvaxed thing until either my risk levels become higher or some new bad ass strain comes along like the fourth horseman. So as I understand your logic is unvaxed = worse infection = worse heart damage. At this point close to 100% of the western population has had covid. Has there been enough research to know for sure that the unvaxed are at a higher risk for heart damage or are you simply asserting that because it sounds logical?
      - Nomentatus 4y ago
        There's a good recent analysis of the hospital stats vs vaccination rates over time, amongst other things. But remember, our defense against viruses includes having infected cells kill themselves, so damage is always widespread over the body after a serious viral infection, it's just that the heart and lungs can't take time off or ramp activity down sharply to recover, so they're extra vulnerable. People dying days after recovering from Spanish flu and returning to strenuous farm work was common, for example. Two such cases among my grandmother's 12 siblings. You're right re 100% infection by now. I had the first two shots (and two infections, one before vaccines were available.) But I did skip the next two, since the bivalent wasn't available yet and evidence re boosting with the same old vaccine was thin. (Antibodies are an indicator not the whole story.) Now I'm scheduled for a bivalent shot. The first vaccine doesn't really help with the new strain, says a recent study. (Google pubmed and you can really dive into the papers, and know more than I about it pretty quickly.)
- belltaco 4y ago
  So what would you call things like the QAnon theories? If you didn't believe them that is.
  - VagueMag 4y ago
    Disinformation. In the case of QAnon I'd go one further and call it a psyop. The idea that it's all just a big laugh carried out by Jim Watkins or some 8chan randos is risible.
    - AustinDev 4y ago
      Was def some sort of psyop.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        By whom? Who benefits aside from enemies of Western democracies?
        VagueMag 4y ago
        The large number of elites who were shown by the Epstein scandal to participate in pedophile rings, concerns about which are now equated in most of the public's mind with wild ARG apophenia.
- 40amxn40 4y ago
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  - timcavel 4y ago
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foota 4y ago
Weird take imo, if anything I think trust in big pharmacy among the mainstream has increased, although maybe the fringe moved a bit more, most people still got vaccinated etc., Republicans were already anti everything before the pandemic.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  People (on HN) are acting like the misinformation being targeted was innocent stuff on 51:49 judgement calls — complete retconning of the abject lunacy profiteers were out there saying. Talk to anyone in health care, people were nebulizing bleach and hydrogen peroxide, convincing their vets to give them literal animal medicine when the supplies of human ivermectin were cut off, taking fish antiparasite drugs, and on and on. There were prominent VCs who claimed they “were literally saving lives” by incessantly promoting sham medicines. Many of the “doctors” in those front line groups made millions of dollars off their grifts in selling rxs to anyone with a check book. I don’t know that there were better citizens than Pfizer and Moderna during the pandemic, but there were absolutely much worse ones.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    People were censored early in the pandemic for saying that wearing masks was a good idea, and a number of other things that are now widely accepted as true.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Another excellent example of retconning. Who specifically was censored for saying that?
      - foota 4y ago
        I don't know about censored, but from what I remember there was a bit of an about face on masking. This timeline seems to mesh with what I remember: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd... And I think some platforms (specifically, I believe YouTube and Twitter, but maybe others) prevented or de-funded etc., content that was contradictory to CDC guidelines.
a_bonobo 4y ago
I think Covid (and all the anti-vax grift around it) was the last straw, exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system. It reminds me of this recent quote from Cory Doctorow: >We’ve had massive institutional failures that make people not believe anything. We focus a lot on the technical mechanics of why people don’t believe anything. Ten years ago, my pain specialist wanted me to go on opioids. I did my own research and determined that big Pharma was conspiring to kill people like me and I was right. The fact that I have the same epistemological basis for my healthcare decision-making as anti-vaxxers is undertheorized in rooms like this one. We leave people in an epistemological void. Source: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-democracy.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-d...
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  Similarly, here's a medical health expert talking about how he's a junkfoodaholic: https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1607144563558187009 https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1607144563558187009
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    What does this man's self control have to do with whether it's beneficial to take vaccines for your health or the health of those around you?
- rqtwteye 4y ago
  The for profit health system has a ton of problems and should be abandoned but it’s not the reason why people lost their minds over Covid. Germany has a better health system (for normal earners. The US system is great for wealthy people) but still has a ton of anti vaxxers and Covid deniers.
  - a_bonobo 4y ago
    I feel Germany is a slightly different beast as a large part of the anti-vax crowd in Germany seems to recruit itself from left-ish/Green corner of politics, the people who've been anti-Monsanto for decades. It's not a far jump from there to anti-vax (it's all big US companies etc.)
walrus01 4y ago
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- AustinDev 4y ago
  Did you even read the thread or listen to the discussions surrounding it. The point of the evidence supplied in the thread is that leading virologists and epidemiologists were actively suppressed by non-experts.
  - walrus01 4y ago
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    - AustinDev 4y ago
      Oh, I spent 2-3 hours today listening to nearly half a dozen epidemiologists talk about how this was all very concerning while these tweets were released. I'm no expert but I've heard plenty of expert criticism of the CDC, WHO and Executive statements on the virus all of which was suppressed at the time.
    - jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg 4y ago
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    - Zpalmtree 4y ago
      the news isn't real because they have other articles that don't agree with my politics okay bro
    - int_19h 4y ago
      The part that you should be concerned about is that factual reporting (and it is clearly factual - it cites specific emails and specific tweets) on this subject had to be published on a fringe site like this, because a mainstream outlet wouldn't pick it up for ideological reasons.
jakear 4y ago
> I'm not a conspiracy theorist As told in my Middle Eastern history class, "it's reasonable to be a conspiracy theorist when you've been the subject of countless governments conspiring against you and/or your people -- in fact it would be unreasonable not to be one". Iranians who claimed the US Government had orchestrated their elections were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, then 47 years later the US said "oh yeah, we totally did that". Americans who claimed the US Government had lied to them about mask effectiveness, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety, lockdown durations, COVID severity, dangers of remote schooling, etc. were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, then 2 years later the US said "oh yeah, we totally did that". Be a conspiracy theorist. To be anything else is to burry your head in the sand.
- Nursie 4y ago
  I love how conspiracy-theorists self-congratulate on things that totally haven’t happened. There’s been no “oh yeah we totally did that” about vaccine safety, lockdowns, covid severity or much else, yet here you are claiming to have been right all along in some nebulous way. It’s very funny to watch.
  - Karsteski 4y ago
    I feel like you completely ignored the point of the person you replied to...
    - Nursie 4y ago
      The point seemed to be “conspiracy theorists are proven right in the end, it’s the only rational approach”, but then it claimed as evidence a bunch of stuff that hasn’t actually come true. Conspiracy theorists are not driven by facts or evidence, as a community they have a scatter-gun approach, and then retcon in “see, we were right all along” by claiming a tiny portion of their collective predictions came true, neatly forgetting the rest that didn’t. Often even those they do claim have come to pass have not, and rely on a misinterpretation or exaggeration. It’s quite funny to watch, a combination of survivorship bias, confirmation bias, wishful thinking and at times downright disingenuousness.
mhh__ 4y ago
I don't know. It should (and I think has) increase distrust in social media and big tech/gov but distrust in pharma? I don't know. I'm still waiting for everyone to drop dead from vaccine related injuries (I've paid this more earnest attention than most people this glib at least) — most people, I think correctly for the most part, regard the nu-antivax thing that came about during covid to basically be the realm of internet weirdos and agitators.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And they haven't stopped agitating. And probably won't stop. Which makes me wonder: with the degree of weaponization of the internet on the side of the anti-vaxxers will the next pandemic be 'the big one'? Enough people that refuse vaccination and you are looking at an entirely different probable outcome. Here in NL a small army of foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorists did their utmost to undermine the vaccination campaign with the most outrageous claims and I'm pretty sure that we can chalk up a number of unnecessary deaths to their efforts. They wouldn't be able to tell a virus from a bacterium but that didn't stop them from spouting one nonsense theory after another and organizing (sometimes violent) protests against health care workers and their equipment. This is a worrisome development.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well. The knock on effects from the absolute bad faith mess from discourse around vaccines is going to fuck up so much in public health for decades. I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths. But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      > There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well. Yes, the anti-vaxx (and anti-government) sentiment has received an enormous boost from this, time will tell what the damage is but a resurgence of things like Polio is not out of the question. > I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths. I'm partially ok with that. They really should give out a double helping of advice: one that is dumbed down for those that lack the necessary background, one that is more on the level for those interested or that do have the necessary background. As it is the dumbed down version is all we've got and the result is that it is too easy to poke holes in it. At the same time, some of the under-preparedness would have been much harder to deal with without the occasional white lie, it stopped a lot of profiteering and kept some items in supply when otherwise there would have been a run on them. > But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want. Yes, and fwiw I think those people should have gone to jail. We're working on a couple of those cases here NL at the moment and I'm really curious what the outcome will be.
cma 4y ago
For me it gave a big distrust of conspiracy theorists and reflexive contrarians, due to things like the ivermectin saga.
- AustinDev 4y ago
  Ivermectin Saga? You distrusted the 'conspiracy theorists' who took a perfectly safe drug that had been taken in the billions of doses a year prior? It was known as a possible protease inhibitor and was very safe to take. Where was the misinformation in what I just posted?
  - cma 4y ago
    More convincing people they didn't need the vaccine because of one or two miracle studies that had huge red flags and overly slanted their metastudy. Brett Weinstein holding the "emergency podcast," which was always really about self-promotion.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    The problem with ivermectin wasn't safety, but efficacy. If you have worms, ivermectin is great for you! Take it! All the studies that showed ivermectin's effectiveness against Covid happened to be from countries with low levels of sanitation. The kinds of places where people are likely to suffer from worms without knowing it. If you have worms and Covid, and take deworming medicine, guess what? You're more likely to beat the 'rona. It doesn't mean the ivermectin cured you of Covid.
    - jounker 4y ago
      If I could upvote this 1000 times, then I would.
  - DanHulton 4y ago
    Or, put another way, people who self-medicated instead of getting the vaccine, putting those around them at risk, who used trickery to order the medication when it became restricted due to an unprecentedly and unplanned-for low supply, who resorted to using animal versions and mis-dosing themselves, risking needing a spot in the hospital that was already desperately needed for COVID patients. Yes, we distrusted those people, and for good reason, I should say.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I am fairly certain this is an American thing, or more broadly an issue in countries with lower levels of education and overall mistrust in their governments which clearly don’t work for them. The basis of my argument is counter example countries such as Denmark. In Denmark, we all got vaccinated, and as soon as a second booster (3rd jab) was available, the government coordinated the distribution with pharmacies to allow administration. The response of the people was so immediate that within a week or so > 80% had at least 2 jabs plus booster. This meant that we could open up immediately, and covid became a thing of the past. Denmark had a peak at the time, with far far far lower deaths per infection than other countries and previous peaks. The difference is in communication. The Danish government and the responsible department communicated everything and monitored the situation in a way that allowed quick and nimble responses. We had free jabs, nobody forced us to get vaccinated, we all did so willingly, we had free testing, and if we didn’t want a jab, we could wear masks and what have you.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > I am fairly certain this is an American thing The exact same thing happened here in the Netherlands.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Perhaps Denmark is the exception then?
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Maybe, it would be worth investigating what made that difference. For sure NL was in chaos and, drivers were a relatively small number of individuals with a disproportionate influence on the outcome.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
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smohare 4y ago
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jmyeet 4y ago
I disagree. Anti-vax movements have been around for as long as there have been vaccines. The only thing that "solves" this problem is a new disease and vaccines that completely displaces the old. Think about it: when was the last time, since the pandemic began, that you heard about autism and the MMR vaccine? that began in the late 90s (with no scientific basis I might add) and persisted for decades. Now no one talks about, thinks about or cares about it anymore. It's completely off the radar. Covid anti-vax movements will meet the exact same fate come the next major vaccine.
- BryantD 4y ago
  It’s the same people, though. RFK Jr. pivoted and incorporated anti-Covid vax rhetoric into the rest of his platform, and that’s bringing the anti-Covid vax conspiracists into the autism myth fold. And the existing anti-vax community fed into QAnon, as well documented by Marc-André Argentino[1]. This is the tricky problem. Trusting the marketplace of ideas works if everyone who participates is interested in spending the time needed to evaluate claims. [1] https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/ https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    And if they are acting with good intent. But some people really would like to see the world burn and there are enough of them that they can do real damage. All those conspiracies originate somewhere and quite a few of those people are well aware of the fact that what they are doing will cause damage.
    - BryantD 4y ago
      I couldn’t agree more. In some cases the anti-vax movement is simply being used as a tool for power.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    It's not all the same people, though. Anti-vax nutjobs were primarily fringe leftists, through 2019. For a few reasons, Covid policy drew a ton of fringe right-wing nutjobs into the movement. In my experience, possibly the worst thing that was done was labeling people who argued against forced vaccination as anti-vaxxers, no matter whether they were against vaccines or not. That made a large number of reasonable people very hostile, and reasonably so; they were being declared an enemy.
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tantalor 4y ago
big government + big pharma got us a vaccine fast
- gilbetron 4y ago
  Some people see things very differently than I do, is what I realized - I thought science, tech, pharma, and government did brilliantly (after a slow start because of ... reasons), and I was amazed at the mind-numbingly massive delivery of the mRNA vaccines (and all the others).
unity1001 4y ago
> the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech. No worries. The people will forget it just like they forgot the Iraq War, the Avandia drug scandal, the Three Mile island, the Mexican gulf oil leak, Iran-Contra and everything else. They will vote in the election. The administration will change. And despite the incoming administrations will be staffed fully by the SAME people who staffed the administrations in the past 40 years, the people will think that something has 'changed' because the frontmen of the administration have different faces. Then rinse and repeat.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  Nothing happened at TMI
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    That’s not true. The extra cancer screening saved tens of lives and the strangling of the nuclear industry probably resulted in millions of excess deaths from pollution compared to if TMI had never happened.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  History strongly shows that epidemics do change political consciousness, toward psychological conservatism. It will take two generations (as with economic depressions) before things get anything like as loose and sloppy again. We'll fail in other ways, meanwhile. Eventually, UK citizens lost their faith in the aristocratic system. But they did. I may be kidding myself but I think there will be some permanent change from this.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    > Eventually, UK citizens lost their faith in the aristocratic system. But they did. I may be kidding myself To start with, getting fed up with aristocrats would be a revolutionary and progressive thing, not conservative. But it does not seem like there is enough such sentiment in the UK to change things. They still have their royals with veto power, they still have the unelected house of lords with aristocratic, religious and appointed hereditary members and the FPTP system. The house of lords can infinitely send back any bill to the parliament, by the way - which amounts to a total veto power.
tjpnz 4y ago
I'm not a conspiracy theorist either but I do have considerably less respect for the WHO than I did before the pandemic. They seem more interested in playing politics and appeasing authoritarian regimes than putting out concrete policy on things which might actually help. Their back and forth on masking was an utter shambles, their stance on Taiwan a disgrace, their "fact finding" missions to China pointless and their Secretary General would often behave like an unhinged lunatic during press conferences. I don't much care for his politics but David Cameron has some interesting ideas on how we can do better: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-shows-new-global-virus-surveillance-needed-david-cameron https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-shows-new-global-virus-... .
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Large institution makes mistakes in face of unprecedented crisis, news at 11. All those standing by the sidelines and criticizing those in the hot seat would no doubt have done a much better job at managing this. I'm all for learning the lessons (such as the link you posted) but I'm categorically against assigning blame against those that worked their asses off to help mitigate this, as long as the lessons stay learned and we do much better next time. Obviously not every move deserved the beauty prize but you have to take into account that the WHO does not have the power required to demand that parties follow up on their advice, which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Which means there are bound to be compromises and degrees of supplication that are ultimately not perfect but that at least move the needle (pun intended) in the right direction. Contrast that with the disinformation barrage that had only one purpose (to destabilize and undermine as much as possible the effort to contain COVID-19). It's pretty easy to criticize, very, very hard to do better.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    >which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Welp, that's probably not what people thought about the WHO before Covid, and certainly justifies the decline in trust. Maybe they could rebrand as World Health And Politics Organization.
yongjik 4y ago
Maybe in the US, but not worldwide. When you compare, countries where citizens trusted the government and generally followed the government's plans fared better than countries where individuals fought for their rights to choose what they think was best for them. IMHO Covid demonstrated the importance of trust in the system. When people trust the system, and think of the society as something they need to work together to maintain, they tend to come out better. Even after their governments did make many bad decisions.
- spritefs 4y ago
  If people don't trust a system that raised them, there are inherent flaws with the system that it is either unable or unwilling to address
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Just because X is bad doesn’t imply Y isn’t worse
  - yongjik 4y ago
    Sure, but a major flaw of the American system is that it's deliberately pushing its people into being distrustful of the system (and each other). Not trusting the government, or wanting to make it less effective, is considered a virtue in many parts of America. (And it's not just the conservatives.)
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - subradios 4y ago
    Yes, but those flaws are not simply among the people these criticisms are leveled at. Technocratic autocracy created the issues, but the response is typically "so add more technocratic autocracy". It's not just those evil billionaires (read, people in the .1 percent whereas being on HN makes you highly likely to be in the 1%) manipulating society, it's Good, Honest, Educated professionals who are making incorrect or reactionary decisions regularly and doubling down when called on it.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
The American public lost faith in all those institutions in the 1970s. COVID didn't make a dent. Hell, we already stopped trusting science in general well before COVID-19. Our authority figures are largely ignored in favor of whoever shouts the loudest and angriest. We elect maniacal buffoons from TV rather than experienced, trustworthy, decent human beings (and again, that started in the 80s). People will always swallow a magic pill that fixes all their problems. What changes is the form the pill takes and who's selling it.
gilbetron 4y ago
I can see what you are saying, but personally the longest lasting legacy for me was a deepening of my distrust of about one third of humanity that will drag us kicking and screaming into the void if given power. The anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the ivermectin cult, the toilet paper hoarders, and all the others that have no idea how science works in its stumbling manner.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

That started during Vietnam, we are still recovering.

Fordec 4y ago

Created? Please, it was already there. Gestures vaguely at every Libertarian, (Neo-)Luddite, Jenny Mccarthy and basically the city of Portland.

AustinDev 4y ago

I am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are figuring it out now. [1]: The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_and_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an...)

laidoffamazon 4y ago
Indeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.
- AustinDev 4y ago
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- kodyo 4y ago
  Biden’s administration was ready to put people out of work if they didn’t get the shots. Red team vs blue team rhetoric is nauseating.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    Indeed, I’m sure this would mean the current unemployment rate is far higher than it was in January 2021 no?
    - kodyo 4y ago
      The courts blocked the insanity.
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        And they only did that because too large a proportion of workers showed the backbone necessary to lose their jobs and livelihoods in order to not take the shots. If the opposition had been something closer to 10% instead of 30% I think it's a good bet that the courts would have punted on the question. As someone who spent the fall and winter of 2021 checking my email each morning to see if my employer was initiating a mandate, I have a deep & abiding appreciation for all the brave resisters who paid a steep price to put these fascistic mandates on the ashheap of history where they always belonged.
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- idgaf4u 4y ago
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  - mindslight 4y ago
    > This comment gets a lot up upvotes until it gets "flagged" and deleted This is because your comment is bog standard disinformation. It tickles the groupthink narrative about "lockdowns", even though "lockdowns" did not exist in the US beyond a few counties in California.
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      That's news to this Washington state resident, who couldn't eat indoors at restaurants or send my kids to in-person school through most of 2020.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Business and school closures are not lockdowns. The abuse of terminology for political purposes is at the heart of this inability to communicate (and both political machines are guilty). If you could legally leave your home (ie you were not subject to a stay at home order with the force of law), you were not "locked down".
        VagueMag 4y ago
        This is a bizarre definition completely at odds with the commonly understood meaning of "lockdowns" in the U.S.
        mindslight 4y ago
        "Commonly understood" by one political camp, which has hyperbolically defined terms to shore up the ranks. See my previous point. "Lockdown" evokes an idea of being uniformly unable to go out at all, which was most certainly not the case. Rather, the business and institutions that were closed were closed for specific reasons. For each venue we can debate those specific reasons - some were certainly ridiculously overbearing [0] - but grouping it all into "lockdowns" accomplishes nothing besides encouraging people talk past one another. [0] Non-controversial example: open air parks that were closed.
kornhole 4y ago
When secretive governments and corporations give stories that don't pass basic tests, our lives depend on finding the most likely truth. This is theorizing. If you don't think they are telling the full truth, you are a conspiracy theorist. I am proud to be one too.
- malandrew 4y ago
  What people don’t get is that the opposite of conspiracy theorist is also a sort of theorist that chooses the prevailing narrative or status quo. A friend of mine coined the term complacency theorist.
smohare 4y ago
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dibt 4y ago
> '2 weeks to slow the spread' Wasn't that to prevent over-crowding of hospitals? Were hospitals not over-crowded?
- VagueMag 4y ago
  Aside from a few urban hospitals which were turned into COVID case dumping grounds in the early weeks, no, they weren't. Hospital employment tanked at the beginning of lockdowns and has only just recovered to pre-Covid levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES6562200001
  - dibt 4y ago
    It doesn't seem like you've said anything backed by facts. The number of employees in hospitals dropping at the start of the pandemic supports that hospitals were under extra stress. Also, it's logical to assume that a crowded and understaffed hospital is a bad place to be when there's an airborne disease spreading. Hard to argue against suggesting people do everything can to stay home for two weeks to not get a new under-researched disease in those conditions.
    - VagueMag 4y ago
      If these measures had actually lasted for only two weeks we'd hardly still be discussing them in the waning days of 2022.
      - dibt 4y ago
        You're still in quarantine? The original comment I was replying to was implying 'two weeks to stop the spread' was a conspiracy. Nice to see people downvoting me for a reasonable comment, while I can't downvote them. Typical for HN. Feel free to downvote this one.
mmcgaha 4y ago
The best part about being a conspiracy theorist is not having myocarditis.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  Heart problems caused by the virus, especially if you haven't been vaccinated, are far more frequent and severe than from the vaccination. Our immune system is powerful and can hurt us all by itself; but it's powerful because it has to be.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    So in fairness, I am in no way anti-vax but I am not vaccinated and intend to ride out this whole unvaxed thing until either my risk levels become higher or some new bad ass strain comes along like the fourth horseman. So as I understand your logic is unvaxed = worse infection = worse heart damage. At this point close to 100% of the western population has had covid. Has there been enough research to know for sure that the unvaxed are at a higher risk for heart damage or are you simply asserting that because it sounds logical?
    - Nomentatus 4y ago
      There's a good recent analysis of the hospital stats vs vaccination rates over time, amongst other things. But remember, our defense against viruses includes having infected cells kill themselves, so damage is always widespread over the body after a serious viral infection, it's just that the heart and lungs can't take time off or ramp activity down sharply to recover, so they're extra vulnerable. People dying days after recovering from Spanish flu and returning to strenuous farm work was common, for example. Two such cases among my grandmother's 12 siblings. You're right re 100% infection by now. I had the first two shots (and two infections, one before vaccines were available.) But I did skip the next two, since the bivalent wasn't available yet and evidence re boosting with the same old vaccine was thin. (Antibodies are an indicator not the whole story.) Now I'm scheduled for a bivalent shot. The first vaccine doesn't really help with the new strain, says a recent study. (Google pubmed and you can really dive into the papers, and know more than I about it pretty quickly.)
belltaco 4y ago
So what would you call things like the QAnon theories? If you didn't believe them that is.
- VagueMag 4y ago
  Disinformation. In the case of QAnon I'd go one further and call it a psyop. The idea that it's all just a big laugh carried out by Jim Watkins or some 8chan randos is risible.
  - AustinDev 4y ago
    Was def some sort of psyop.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      By whom? Who benefits aside from enemies of Western democracies?
      - VagueMag 4y ago
        The large number of elites who were shown by the Epstein scandal to participate in pedophile rings, concerns about which are now equated in most of the public's mind with wild ARG apophenia.
40amxn40 4y ago
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- timcavel 4y ago
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foota 4y ago

Weird take imo, if anything I think trust in big pharmacy among the mainstream has increased, although maybe the fringe moved a bit more, most people still got vaccinated etc., Republicans were already anti everything before the pandemic.

mikeyouse 4y ago
People (on HN) are acting like the misinformation being targeted was innocent stuff on 51:49 judgement calls — complete retconning of the abject lunacy profiteers were out there saying. Talk to anyone in health care, people were nebulizing bleach and hydrogen peroxide, convincing their vets to give them literal animal medicine when the supplies of human ivermectin were cut off, taking fish antiparasite drugs, and on and on. There were prominent VCs who claimed they “were literally saving lives” by incessantly promoting sham medicines. Many of the “doctors” in those front line groups made millions of dollars off their grifts in selling rxs to anyone with a check book. I don’t know that there were better citizens than Pfizer and Moderna during the pandemic, but there were absolutely much worse ones.
- twblalock 4y ago
  People were censored early in the pandemic for saying that wearing masks was a good idea, and a number of other things that are now widely accepted as true.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Another excellent example of retconning. Who specifically was censored for saying that?
    - foota 4y ago
      I don't know about censored, but from what I remember there was a bit of an about face on masking. This timeline seems to mesh with what I remember: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd... And I think some platforms (specifically, I believe YouTube and Twitter, but maybe others) prevented or de-funded etc., content that was contradictory to CDC guidelines.

a_bonobo 4y ago

I think Covid (and all the anti-vax grift around it) was the last straw, exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system. It reminds me of this recent quote from Cory Doctorow: >We’ve had massive institutional failures that make people not believe anything. We focus a lot on the technical mechanics of why people don’t believe anything. Ten years ago, my pain specialist wanted me to go on opioids. I did my own research and determined that big Pharma was conspiring to kill people like me and I was right. The fact that I have the same epistemological basis for my healthcare decision-making as anti-vaxxers is undertheorized in rooms like this one. We leave people in an epistemological void. Source: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-democracy.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-d...

scifibestfi 4y ago
Similarly, here's a medical health expert talking about how he's a junkfoodaholic: https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1607144563558187009 https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1607144563558187009
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  What does this man's self control have to do with whether it's beneficial to take vaccines for your health or the health of those around you?
rqtwteye 4y ago
The for profit health system has a ton of problems and should be abandoned but it’s not the reason why people lost their minds over Covid. Germany has a better health system (for normal earners. The US system is great for wealthy people) but still has a ton of anti vaxxers and Covid deniers.
- a_bonobo 4y ago
  I feel Germany is a slightly different beast as a large part of the anti-vax crowd in Germany seems to recruit itself from left-ish/Green corner of politics, the people who've been anti-Monsanto for decades. It's not a far jump from there to anti-vax (it's all big US companies etc.)

walrus01 4y ago

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AustinDev 4y ago
Did you even read the thread or listen to the discussions surrounding it. The point of the evidence supplied in the thread is that leading virologists and epidemiologists were actively suppressed by non-experts.
- walrus01 4y ago
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  - AustinDev 4y ago
    Oh, I spent 2-3 hours today listening to nearly half a dozen epidemiologists talk about how this was all very concerning while these tweets were released. I'm no expert but I've heard plenty of expert criticism of the CDC, WHO and Executive statements on the virus all of which was suppressed at the time.
  - jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Zpalmtree 4y ago
    the news isn't real because they have other articles that don't agree with my politics okay bro
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The part that you should be concerned about is that factual reporting (and it is clearly factual - it cites specific emails and specific tweets) on this subject had to be published on a fringe site like this, because a mainstream outlet wouldn't pick it up for ideological reasons.

jakear 4y ago

> I'm not a conspiracy theorist As told in my Middle Eastern history class, "it's reasonable to be a conspiracy theorist when you've been the subject of countless governments conspiring against you and/or your people -- in fact it would be unreasonable not to be one". Iranians who claimed the US Government had orchestrated their elections were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, then 47 years later the US said "oh yeah, we totally did that". Americans who claimed the US Government had lied to them about mask effectiveness, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety, lockdown durations, COVID severity, dangers of remote schooling, etc. were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, then 2 years later the US said "oh yeah, we totally did that". Be a conspiracy theorist. To be anything else is to burry your head in the sand.

Nursie 4y ago
I love how conspiracy-theorists self-congratulate on things that totally haven’t happened. There’s been no “oh yeah we totally did that” about vaccine safety, lockdowns, covid severity or much else, yet here you are claiming to have been right all along in some nebulous way. It’s very funny to watch.
- Karsteski 4y ago
  I feel like you completely ignored the point of the person you replied to...
  - Nursie 4y ago
    The point seemed to be “conspiracy theorists are proven right in the end, it’s the only rational approach”, but then it claimed as evidence a bunch of stuff that hasn’t actually come true. Conspiracy theorists are not driven by facts or evidence, as a community they have a scatter-gun approach, and then retcon in “see, we were right all along” by claiming a tiny portion of their collective predictions came true, neatly forgetting the rest that didn’t. Often even those they do claim have come to pass have not, and rely on a misinterpretation or exaggeration. It’s quite funny to watch, a combination of survivorship bias, confirmation bias, wishful thinking and at times downright disingenuousness.

mhh__ 4y ago

I don't know. It should (and I think has) increase distrust in social media and big tech/gov but distrust in pharma? I don't know. I'm still waiting for everyone to drop dead from vaccine related injuries (I've paid this more earnest attention than most people this glib at least) — most people, I think correctly for the most part, regard the nu-antivax thing that came about during covid to basically be the realm of internet weirdos and agitators.

jacquesm 4y ago
And they haven't stopped agitating. And probably won't stop. Which makes me wonder: with the degree of weaponization of the internet on the side of the anti-vaxxers will the next pandemic be 'the big one'? Enough people that refuse vaccination and you are looking at an entirely different probable outcome. Here in NL a small army of foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorists did their utmost to undermine the vaccination campaign with the most outrageous claims and I'm pretty sure that we can chalk up a number of unnecessary deaths to their efforts. They wouldn't be able to tell a virus from a bacterium but that didn't stop them from spouting one nonsense theory after another and organizing (sometimes violent) protests against health care workers and their equipment. This is a worrisome development.
- rtpg 4y ago
  There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well. The knock on effects from the absolute bad faith mess from discourse around vaccines is going to fuck up so much in public health for decades. I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths. But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well. Yes, the anti-vaxx (and anti-government) sentiment has received an enormous boost from this, time will tell what the damage is but a resurgence of things like Polio is not out of the question. > I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths. I'm partially ok with that. They really should give out a double helping of advice: one that is dumbed down for those that lack the necessary background, one that is more on the level for those interested or that do have the necessary background. As it is the dumbed down version is all we've got and the result is that it is too easy to poke holes in it. At the same time, some of the under-preparedness would have been much harder to deal with without the occasional white lie, it stopped a lot of profiteering and kept some items in supply when otherwise there would have been a run on them. > But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want. Yes, and fwiw I think those people should have gone to jail. We're working on a couple of those cases here NL at the moment and I'm really curious what the outcome will be.

cma 4y ago

For me it gave a big distrust of conspiracy theorists and reflexive contrarians, due to things like the ivermectin saga.

AustinDev 4y ago
Ivermectin Saga? You distrusted the 'conspiracy theorists' who took a perfectly safe drug that had been taken in the billions of doses a year prior? It was known as a possible protease inhibitor and was very safe to take. Where was the misinformation in what I just posted?
- cma 4y ago
  More convincing people they didn't need the vaccine because of one or two miracle studies that had huge red flags and overly slanted their metastudy. Brett Weinstein holding the "emergency podcast," which was always really about self-promotion.
- triceratops 4y ago
  The problem with ivermectin wasn't safety, but efficacy. If you have worms, ivermectin is great for you! Take it! All the studies that showed ivermectin's effectiveness against Covid happened to be from countries with low levels of sanitation. The kinds of places where people are likely to suffer from worms without knowing it. If you have worms and Covid, and take deworming medicine, guess what? You're more likely to beat the 'rona. It doesn't mean the ivermectin cured you of Covid.
  - jounker 4y ago
    If I could upvote this 1000 times, then I would.
- DanHulton 4y ago
  Or, put another way, people who self-medicated instead of getting the vaccine, putting those around them at risk, who used trickery to order the medication when it became restricted due to an unprecentedly and unplanned-for low supply, who resorted to using animal versions and mis-dosing themselves, risking needing a spot in the hospital that was already desperately needed for COVID patients. Yes, we distrusted those people, and for good reason, I should say.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

I am fairly certain this is an American thing, or more broadly an issue in countries with lower levels of education and overall mistrust in their governments which clearly don’t work for them. The basis of my argument is counter example countries such as Denmark. In Denmark, we all got vaccinated, and as soon as a second booster (3rd jab) was available, the government coordinated the distribution with pharmacies to allow administration. The response of the people was so immediate that within a week or so > 80% had at least 2 jabs plus booster. This meant that we could open up immediately, and covid became a thing of the past. Denmark had a peak at the time, with far far far lower deaths per infection than other countries and previous peaks. The difference is in communication. The Danish government and the responsible department communicated everything and monitored the situation in a way that allowed quick and nimble responses. We had free jabs, nobody forced us to get vaccinated, we all did so willingly, we had free testing, and if we didn’t want a jab, we could wear masks and what have you.

jacquesm 4y ago
> I am fairly certain this is an American thing The exact same thing happened here in the Netherlands.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Perhaps Denmark is the exception then?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Maybe, it would be worth investigating what made that difference. For sure NL was in chaos and, drivers were a relatively small number of individuals with a disproportionate influence on the outcome.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

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smohare 4y ago

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jmyeet 4y ago

I disagree. Anti-vax movements have been around for as long as there have been vaccines. The only thing that "solves" this problem is a new disease and vaccines that completely displaces the old. Think about it: when was the last time, since the pandemic began, that you heard about autism and the MMR vaccine? that began in the late 90s (with no scientific basis I might add) and persisted for decades. Now no one talks about, thinks about or cares about it anymore. It's completely off the radar. Covid anti-vax movements will meet the exact same fate come the next major vaccine.

BryantD 4y ago
It’s the same people, though. RFK Jr. pivoted and incorporated anti-Covid vax rhetoric into the rest of his platform, and that’s bringing the anti-Covid vax conspiracists into the autism myth fold. And the existing anti-vax community fed into QAnon, as well documented by Marc-André Argentino[1]. This is the tricky problem. Trusting the marketplace of ideas works if everyone who participates is interested in spending the time needed to evaluate claims. [1] https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/ https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And if they are acting with good intent. But some people really would like to see the world burn and there are enough of them that they can do real damage. All those conspiracies originate somewhere and quite a few of those people are well aware of the fact that what they are doing will cause damage.
  - BryantD 4y ago
    I couldn’t agree more. In some cases the anti-vax movement is simply being used as a tool for power.
- kbelder 4y ago
  It's not all the same people, though. Anti-vax nutjobs were primarily fringe leftists, through 2019. For a few reasons, Covid policy drew a ton of fringe right-wing nutjobs into the movement. In my experience, possibly the worst thing that was done was labeling people who argued against forced vaccination as anti-vaxxers, no matter whether they were against vaccines or not. That made a large number of reasonable people very hostile, and reasonably so; they were being declared an enemy.

deleted 4y ago

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tantalor 4y ago

big government + big pharma got us a vaccine fast

gilbetron 4y ago
Some people see things very differently than I do, is what I realized - I thought science, tech, pharma, and government did brilliantly (after a slow start because of ... reasons), and I was amazed at the mind-numbingly massive delivery of the mRNA vaccines (and all the others).

unity1001 4y ago

> the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech. No worries. The people will forget it just like they forgot the Iraq War, the Avandia drug scandal, the Three Mile island, the Mexican gulf oil leak, Iran-Contra and everything else. They will vote in the election. The administration will change. And despite the incoming administrations will be staffed fully by the SAME people who staffed the administrations in the past 40 years, the people will think that something has 'changed' because the frontmen of the administration have different faces. Then rinse and repeat.

Fatnino 4y ago
Nothing happened at TMI
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  That’s not true. The extra cancer screening saved tens of lives and the strangling of the nuclear industry probably resulted in millions of excess deaths from pollution compared to if TMI had never happened.
Nomentatus 4y ago
History strongly shows that epidemics do change political consciousness, toward psychological conservatism. It will take two generations (as with economic depressions) before things get anything like as loose and sloppy again. We'll fail in other ways, meanwhile. Eventually, UK citizens lost their faith in the aristocratic system. But they did. I may be kidding myself but I think there will be some permanent change from this.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > Eventually, UK citizens lost their faith in the aristocratic system. But they did. I may be kidding myself To start with, getting fed up with aristocrats would be a revolutionary and progressive thing, not conservative. But it does not seem like there is enough such sentiment in the UK to change things. They still have their royals with veto power, they still have the unelected house of lords with aristocratic, religious and appointed hereditary members and the FPTP system. The house of lords can infinitely send back any bill to the parliament, by the way - which amounts to a total veto power.

tjpnz 4y ago

I'm not a conspiracy theorist either but I do have considerably less respect for the WHO than I did before the pandemic. They seem more interested in playing politics and appeasing authoritarian regimes than putting out concrete policy on things which might actually help. Their back and forth on masking was an utter shambles, their stance on Taiwan a disgrace, their "fact finding" missions to China pointless and their Secretary General would often behave like an unhinged lunatic during press conferences. I don't much care for his politics but David Cameron has some interesting ideas on how we can do better: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-shows-new-global-virus-surveillance-needed-david-cameron https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-shows-new-global-virus-... .

jacquesm 4y ago
Large institution makes mistakes in face of unprecedented crisis, news at 11. All those standing by the sidelines and criticizing those in the hot seat would no doubt have done a much better job at managing this. I'm all for learning the lessons (such as the link you posted) but I'm categorically against assigning blame against those that worked their asses off to help mitigate this, as long as the lessons stay learned and we do much better next time. Obviously not every move deserved the beauty prize but you have to take into account that the WHO does not have the power required to demand that parties follow up on their advice, which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Which means there are bound to be compromises and degrees of supplication that are ultimately not perfect but that at least move the needle (pun intended) in the right direction. Contrast that with the disinformation barrage that had only one purpose (to destabilize and undermine as much as possible the effort to contain COVID-19). It's pretty easy to criticize, very, very hard to do better.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  >which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Welp, that's probably not what people thought about the WHO before Covid, and certainly justifies the decline in trust. Maybe they could rebrand as World Health And Politics Organization.

yongjik 4y ago

Maybe in the US, but not worldwide. When you compare, countries where citizens trusted the government and generally followed the government's plans fared better than countries where individuals fought for their rights to choose what they think was best for them. IMHO Covid demonstrated the importance of trust in the system. When people trust the system, and think of the society as something they need to work together to maintain, they tend to come out better. Even after their governments did make many bad decisions.

spritefs 4y ago
If people don't trust a system that raised them, there are inherent flaws with the system that it is either unable or unwilling to address
- TylerE 4y ago
  Just because X is bad doesn’t imply Y isn’t worse
- yongjik 4y ago
  Sure, but a major flaw of the American system is that it's deliberately pushing its people into being distrustful of the system (and each other). Not trusting the government, or wanting to make it less effective, is considered a virtue in many parts of America. (And it's not just the conservatives.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- subradios 4y ago
  Yes, but those flaws are not simply among the people these criticisms are leveled at. Technocratic autocracy created the issues, but the response is typically "so add more technocratic autocracy". It's not just those evil billionaires (read, people in the .1 percent whereas being on HN makes you highly likely to be in the 1%) manipulating society, it's Good, Honest, Educated professionals who are making incorrect or reactionary decisions regularly and doubling down when called on it.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

The American public lost faith in all those institutions in the 1970s. COVID didn't make a dent. Hell, we already stopped trusting science in general well before COVID-19. Our authority figures are largely ignored in favor of whoever shouts the loudest and angriest. We elect maniacal buffoons from TV rather than experienced, trustworthy, decent human beings (and again, that started in the 80s). People will always swallow a magic pill that fixes all their problems. What changes is the form the pill takes and who's selling it.

gilbetron 4y ago

I can see what you are saying, but personally the longest lasting legacy for me was a deepening of my distrust of about one third of humanity that will drag us kicking and screaming into the void if given power. The anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the ivermectin cult, the toilet paper hoarders, and all the others that have no idea how science works in its stumbling manner.