To be fair, the medical establishment did lie about it, but not because of some weird “big mask” or “big pharma” conspiracy, but because they have a tangible impact when used by large groups and overselling them would have better outcomes than underselling them.
It’s a classic problem those in power have to deal with: tell the truth and get an underwhelming response, or oversell and get a better response.
Don’t take horse dewormers though, that’s just dumb.
Overselling something that is true is not the same as flat out lying about the efficacy of a random pharmaceutical. Not even in the same neighbourhood.
You can surely at least understand the mindset there. Basically, when party A is obviously lying, a party B that calls them out appears more trustworthy, and it’s easier to overlook the obvious flaws in party B’s alternative. Here’s the logic, specific to vaccines:
- group A claims vaccines are effective against contracting a given disease
- group B points to evidence of actual effectiveness, which vastly falls short of what the public thinks
- group B proposes an alternative to the vaccine, implying it’s effective and that group A doesn’t want others to know about it
- group A attacks group B’s alternative
This creates an us vs them situation, so if you already distrust group A somewhat, it’s easy to side w/ group B, assuming you have no actual knowledge to parse the available information. The same logic works with anything, you just need a little bit of distrust w/ some authority, evidence of false/misleading statements, and a seemingly credible alternative.
The trick is to not lie/be misleading in the first place so you don’t break the trust. Trust takes years to build and a moment to break, so you need a very good reason to break the trust.
No, I really can’t understand the mindset. Especially not in the face of the constant undermining of trust by certain elements of society, including when they’re in government. We didn’t just arrive here for no reason. The same people who have eroded the trustworthiness of government and authority (on purpose, see Reagan) over decades are the ones who now exploit the results of their actions, for their own gain.
If, in your scenario, group B was on the level, it would be a different story. But they aren’t. If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven. B also just didn’t oversell their own claim, they also exaggerated the claim that they refuted to something that, in this form, was never said - standard MO.
There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.