Went on a deep dive to understand vaccine polarization and its immense, irreparable cost
Came away believing that misinformation is an incomplete explanation. This snowball started down the mountain in february 2020. Could all of the conservative elites have stopped it in 2021 if they really tried? Maybe, and they should have.
But polarization is earlier, and simpler, and evading it requires much more strategy and foresight than our political or media elites seem capable of. The most upsetting thing of all: It's not clear that hundreds of thousands of dead people move the needle on their self-interest
Long term though, the reckless severing of trust between the republican base and science is deeply unwise (and so clearly, painfully evil.) If evidence-based medicine is your enemy, you lose, period.
for some deeper history of polarization in the US - read Why We're Polarized by @ezraklein - it convinced me that vaccine polarization was absolutely predictable given a Biden win in 2020. Sure this was our first pandemic but you really wish there'd been a depolarization strategy
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