Agreed. For instance, 99% of people including myself cannot prove to themselves that vaccines are safe. The full explanation of vaccine safety down to the lowest level would be beyond my understanding. Trust in the authority figure is required.
Trust in that is required even for experts in the field. Replicating experiments is tricky, expensive, and sometimes risks the health of humans or kills a non-human test subject. (Though I really wouldn’t call this an appeal to “authority” so much as presumably “consensus of those in the field”)
The "anti-vaxxer" movement thing is muddying the water alot concerning vaccines. I feel like valid concerns are downplayed nowadays which in it self will feed the sentiment.
I really hope it doesn't leak the US more than it allready has. I prefer lifestyle subcultures centred around music taste.
There are indeed valid concerns about vaccinations, but I'm not convinced that vast majority of anti-vaxxers made any effort to represent that stance with an good faith. Hell, they politicized wearing a mask during a pandemic, which ordinarily would be considered the most harmless and least controversial thing to do during a pandemic.
Ye I think a big problem might be that those who raises concerns about a specific vaccin might be tauted as "anti-vaxxers". Like, how crack pots and tin foil hats have been used to discredit proper regime critics.
"Well, yes, Alex Jones also says PFASs are bad. Cooking in ... no I don't watch his show ... what? No, I have no prescriptions" etc. (I don't know if he said Telfon pots were bad before it was generally known to be true but lets pretend he did).
The mask thing was a great messup. Going from "it does nothing" to "you must wear them" is not very pedagogical.
