It doesn't matter if the topic is far beyond them, what matters is that they have an answer and that answer reinforces their biases. Reality is the enemy.
Isn't that what everyone does, regardless of distance or direction?
> They don't want to be subject to authority, they want to be be the unquestioned authority.
So where do the people who question authority fit into this neat dichotomy?
After all, why should young healthy people spend so much time thinking about rejecting mainstream medicine?
Of course experts aren't respected. They've demanded it.
You also should never trust any court, in particular, the Supreme Court. A court has no special access to facts, yet it operates with complete authority, as if it's process was entirely without error. They are a compromise that only makes sense when all other civil remedies have been exhausted because there is no mechanism to guarantee an improved outcome from their involvement.
Which highlights the basic point here, any institution of appreciable size and without competition cannot possibly remain uncorrupted by it. It's essentially impossible to build any government institution that is worthy of "trust."
There are facts out there that can otherwise be kept private until subpoenad by court order, is that not special access to facts?
We've focused on the individual so much in American society that people have a real hard time viewing their individual situations as anything other than a personal failure and something they alone must correct, so we wind up with this kind of wacky bullshit instead of, like, labor laws and healthcare.
People ARE individuals, on a physical level too. Modern medicine is notoriously bad at addressing this, and until the technology catches up the only alternative to people trying things on their own is state-mandated trials on vulnerable groups.
Locking people down at home for over 2 years. Damaging an entire generation of young children in the process.
Destroying the economy in the process. Inflationary policies which lead to recessions and stagflation globally from which we still haven't recovered (and probably won't for the next 5-10 years).
Spreading mass fear and hysteria based on little empirical (and often contradictory) evidence.
Obliterating global travel and commerce.
Forced global-scale campaigns on live, involuntary human experimentation. Get the jab or stay locked up. Get the app or forget about going to work today.
Forcing people to wear thin pieces of cloth over their faces for no reason.
Silencing any critique and punishing any forms of noncompliance with heavy fines and incarceration (Djokovic is a threat to national security and public health).
Normalizing "asking difficult questions" as something only "conspiracy theorists" would do.
Installing anti-democratic laws and mechanisms which subvert the individual's right to free speech, gathering, movement, and control over their own body.
Bullshit and twisted statistics arbitrarily used as excuse for random decisions.
This list is far from complete...
Many people who are far from the levers of power would disagree strongly with your above portrayal. It's an issue that divides people more than an issue where the masses were hoodwinked by an elite with ulterior motives.
There might not have been a reason to make everyone stay home, but if the only way you can get people to take a quickly evolving situation seriously is to over correct, then that is the tool you have to use.
By making the same rules apply to everyone and having such extreme responses it reduced the ability for the majority to say "yeah, its bad but it doesn't apply to me". By making everyone wear masks, it was the only way to get the people who really needed to wear the masks to do so.
The policies were extreme because the situation was extreme. People now have the hindsight, but I have lost at least 3 family members and 5 neighbors due to covid and the secondary effects. 4 of those died of ordinarily treatable causes (heat attack, pneumonia, etc), but the health system wasn't able to provide them the treatment needed because of Covid was overwhelming them.
Belief in democracy requires that you assume that most people are acting in good faith. Perfectly intelligent people have sensible, non-malicious reasons to come to conclusions that are opposite of yours.
The entire fiat economy is anti-scientific fiat decree of the political elite.
You want to eat? Oh sorry you do y have any of this hallucination called “money”.
If you want to go full edge-lord over socialized belief in anti-scientific BS, you got a whole lot of personal emotions to work through; like how no physics puts it on others to grow your food or be your airplane pilot. DIY rather than co-opt others agency.
Oh what’s that? Society isn’t built on textbook interpretation of physics? It’s built on diffusion of power through the many to keep some rando having too much?
The rest of us aren’t here to serve you either. Grow up, one of billions.
No wonder no one trusts the government anymore.