Comment by llamaimperative
1 day ago
In an alternative universe, Trump said something like, "Hey folks, I know wearing masks can be a bit unusual and uncomfortable at times, and we're not totally certain how effective they are, but there's good reason to believe they'll save the lives of some of our fellow Americans... please put them on when you're around other people, we'll re-assess as we get a better understanding of the cost-benefit tradeoff."
In that universe, we're not even toying with the idea that the American public would violently revolt at the idea of some basic mitigations of a respiratory epidemic.
I agree. And I think a lot of the most extreme backlash took off towards the end of the pandemic, when vaccine mandates became a thing. This was the moment where many people I know who were otherwise ok going along with many of the other measures started drawing a line and then began working backwards towards doubting everything else they had been told up to that point.
Notably, this was not Trump's fuckup.
And just to be clear about where I stand - I get the COVID booster together with a flu shot every fall now.
Russian national strategy for a long time[0] has been to sow domestic strife/fuel sectarianism by an available means, and politicizing vaccine hesitancy has been a wildly successful lever for them. They were definitely doing this even before Covid[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/1952/