I completely understand “vaccine hesitancy” or even outright opposition.
In general, people (when making personal medical decisions) refer to experts, given how specialization of knowledge works especially in advanced fields. Institutions or people who are seen as unbiased and knowledgeable, beyond reproach or politics or greed. For example?
Big pharma giants like Johnson and Johnson. You know… the ones who laced Tylenol with cyanide. The ones who marketed Risperdal. The ones who put out baby powder contaminated with asbestos that caused cancer.
The CDC, who at the start of this pandemic not only outlawed testing, but destroyed the results, leaving us blind.
The FDA, which still hasn’t technically approved these vaccines, and if they approve them this early are merely going to be accused of politicizing science to fit the result government wants.
Social media once allowed a marketplace of ideas, but ironically enough by de-platforming any dissenting ideas or even experts from making their case… platforms have eroded trust in the ideas they wish to promote. Such censorship makes it seem that they’re afraid their own ideas can’t hold up to scrutiny which makes users question what these gatekeepers label truth more than they otherwise would.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have used this as an opportunity to sow fear. Fear of either COVID or vaccines or policy or even their constituent’s neighbors in order to gain political advantage through division. It’s been naked pandering not to the middle, but to the bases who are convinced of their own righteousness already.
Trump and Biden have peddled bullshit, from snake oil salesmen cures to excessive paranoia virtue signaling. Cuomo stuffed the infected into nursing homes. Governors who have done nothing or waaay too much of something... it's all eroded faith in institutions.
The legacy news media has long held that if it bleeds, it leads.
Personally? I’m getting the vaccine on Friday. But don’t pretend that there’s no reason to be “hesitant”, or that those not complying with the jab are all inbred hicks flying Trump flags on their pickups. There’s plenty of valid reasons to question the narrative, when all the narrators have highlighted reasons for distrust.