I think we’re in the presence of something like a religious or pseudo-religious phenomenon. People are just not thinking clearly, and mere contrarianism is becoming part of their identities.
There is something pornographic about all this. This reflexive distrust of institutional authority is like the pornography of doubt. People are infatuated with this stuff. And there is a zealotry around it. And the quality of the thinking is SO BAD in so many cases.
[…]
This is what it’s like to argue about religion or the 911 Truth conspiracy. On those fronts I’ve learned to pick my battles because getting into the trenches is so unrewarding. Covid aside, we have a much larger problem on our hands.
We have to figure out how to solve this riddle: how do we improve our institutions and trust them when we should all the while recognizing that they’ve become less worthy of that trust.
[…]
The failings of our institutions need not lead to a total breakdown of trust in our institutions. It is possible to exaggerate how much our institutions have failed, and that is what is most objectionable and so dysfunctional about what [anti-vaxxer X] is doing with his podcast. This “just asking questions” routine is corrosive of public trust at a time where the failure of trust translates into disease and death and unnecessary risk of disease and death for others.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. There is no compelling reason at this point to be worried about these vaccines. There is a compelling reason to be worried about just letting this pandemic burn through the unvaccinated population. We should be spreading these vaccinations to the entire world at this point. And we need institutions. We need to repair our institutions. We need to criticize them for their failures. But the idea that we can navigate a global public health emergency by podcast and substack newsletter is patently ridiculous. We need a functioning CDC and FDA and WHO. We need medical journals that are credible. And it’s this breakdown in legitimacy – or perceived legitimacy – that is proving so dysfunctional.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-me-anything-17/id733163012?i=1000531388849