Many Americans believe that vaccines are unsafe, but will jab themselves full of performance enhancers. They think seed oils cause chronic disease, but beef tallow is healthy. They’ll say you can’t trust federally insured banks, but you can trust the millionaires who want you to invest in their volatile vaporware crypto tokens. They think food additives are toxic but support an administration removing all restrictions on pumping pollutants into the air and water. They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.
The coronavirus wasn’t the only epidemic to hit the United States in the past decade. Americans are also facing a bizarre epidemic of gullibility and cynicism—gullicism, if you need a portmanteau—that is drawing people into a world of conspiracism and falsehoods, one where facts are drowned out by a cacophony of extremely loud and wrong voices. Reliable information is both more available and harder to find than ever—and those who spread misinformation have been rewarded with positions of power, platforms they can exploit to further pollute the information environment.
There’s nothing wrong with being a little crunchy, but we’re well beyond the recommended dosage here. America’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., staked his political career on the false belief that vaccines cause autism, and has used his power to force federal agencies to support his bonkers position: The CDC’s website now says, “Studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Thanks to Kennedy and others, measles outbreaks are happening all over the country after the disease was declared officially eliminated in the U.S. 26 years ago. More than 3,200 cases (since the start of 2025) and at least two deaths of unvaccinated children later, the head of Medicare and Medicaid, Mehmet Oz—you might remember him for his clout-chasing attempt to foment panic about arsenic in apple juice—was driven to beg Americans to trust the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.
“Take the vaccine, please,” Oz said on CNN. “We have a solution for our problem.”
www.theatlantic.com