Comment by AlexandrB
2 days ago
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/