> Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation?The problem is not misinformation. The problem is whether a country is really willing to enforce a law that says every citizen has a positive responsibility to not infect others.
If you really enforce that law, then anyone who gets COVID-19 because they didn't take reasonable precautions, and then infects someone else, is legally liable for damages. They could be sued for all of the health care costs of anyone they infect. They could be sued for wrongful death if someone they infect dies. Depending on the circumstances and the details of the statute, they could be liable to criminal charges.
That's what "individual responsibility" means--holding individuals responsible, legally, when they harm others. And in a legal environment like that, misinformation isn't a problem, because people who act on misinformation end up harming others and being held responsible, and since nobody wants to be in that position, everyone learns, in their own self-interest, to not act on misinformation. Which in turn means that information sources that continually propagate misinformation die because nobody listens to them. And information sources that can reliably report accurate information thrive, and have an incentive to continue reporting accurate information.
> This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.
Representative democracy will only be composed of such people if people have a strong incentive to act on accurate information and to not act on misinformation. Which, as you yourself point out, does not describe societies today.