FTA: Beyond attacking individuals and institutions, the charlatans and ideologues have been attacking the very idea of expertise itself. You may have facts, but I have alternative facts. Your experts say X, but my experts say Y. Experts are all pointy-headed elitists who don’t care about regular people anyway. It’s all a giant conspiracy. Anyone who disagrees with me is a shill. Science I don’t like is dismissed as bought and paid for.
Something I can’t explain. In grade school, the “nerds” (smart kids) are ridiculed and belittled by the “jocks” and others. I get that; it compensates the childish ego for being a dummy: “At least I’m not a nerd.” “Hitting a home run is more important than understanding trigonometry.” Now these dummies grow up and suddenly insist that their ideas and opinions-based on ignorance, religious myths and other mindless crap-are better and more reliable than those of the smart nerds they once attacked. Instead of despising people for being smarter than they are, they reverse roles and now pretend to be the smart ones. So instead of dismissing intelligence as useless, they value it and pretend to have it. There must be a psychology to all of this, but it’s pretty weird.
But vaccines are just a scam by BigPharma to make people live longer and spend more money on healthcare in the long run. They don't tell you that older people tend to spend more on healthcare, or that when people die from preventable diseases, they stop paying for medical treatment entirely.