“Trust the Plan” a book about QAnon explains how this happens. It’s mostly through repeated reinforcement. But exposure is extra powerful when people think they’ve put the clues together themselves, rather than having it laid out. Explanatory power (providing explanations for things that are otherwise mysterious) is another key.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't think it's weird her reputation was destroyed because she doubted the value of vaccine mandates?

She went from "questioning" vaccine mandates to stuff about microchips, North Korean style police states, WEF etc.

Well, Musk is literally trying to put microchips in people. That's not crazy at this point. We will probably all have chips in us in our lifetime. And North Korea does exist and is a nutty police state. And WEF has incredibly ambitious goals. None of this sounds nuts.

Most of what people were being censored for is now commonly accepted as fact. Things like: the covid vaccine won't prevent you from getting covid. Mask efficacy is debatable. Children aren't at great risk from covid. There will be negative consequences from shutting schools and businesses. It's okay to go jogging outside without a mask on, you won't get or pass covid from that. These things were so incredibly controversial during covid that they could not be said in mixed company. Looking back, who looks crazier? The people who said it would be fine for us to open schools like virtually the rest of the planet. Or the ones who insisted these benign ideas were dangerous and "going to get people killed!"

The reason we shut down schools and wore masks was because people were dying. They may not have been the types of people you care about (elderly, immune compromised, disabled) but they were dying and hospitals could not keep up. It was a desperate attempt to try to slow the spread so that hospitals weren’t so overwhelmed with COVID patients they could serve others with non-COVID emergencies.

The vaccines do decrease the severity and chance of needing hospitalization or if dying.

Yes, most healthy adults would be fine. Most healthy kids are fine. But you do realize kids have adult and older teachers who may have health issues? That they may live with at-risk relatives?

Whenever I hear your argument I just hear “I only care about healthy people”.

And your argument just reinforces that there was/is a “correct” set of beliefs about covid that had more to do with ideology & politics than actual fact-finding.

In answer to OP’s question, there are definitely people who have personality disorders or mental illnesses that lead them down the path to conspiracy theories. But you probably knew this about them before covid.

There are also people who disagreed, sometimes strongly, with the “official view” on covid - such as school closures, vaccine side effects, masking, mandates. lab leak. These people are not conspiracy theorists. The ones who are acting irrationally and like they have an agenda beyond “science” are the ones who want to shut down bona fide disagreement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't think it's weird her reputation was destroyed because she doubted the value of vaccine mandates?

She went from "questioning" vaccine mandates to stuff about microchips, North Korean style police states, WEF etc.

Well, Musk is literally trying to put microchips in people. That's not crazy at this point. We will probably all have chips in us in our lifetime. And North Korea does exist and is a nutty police state. And WEF has incredibly ambitious goals. None of this sounds nuts.

Most of what people were being censored for is now commonly accepted as fact. Things like: the covid vaccine won't prevent you from getting covid. Mask efficacy is debatable. Children aren't at great risk from covid. There will be negative consequences from shutting schools and businesses. It's okay to go jogging outside without a mask on, you won't get or pass covid from that. These things were so incredibly controversial during covid that they could not be said in mixed company. Looking back, who looks crazier? The people who said it would be fine for us to open schools like virtually the rest of the planet. Or the ones who insisted these benign ideas were dangerous and "going to get people killed!"

The reason we shut down schools and wore masks was because people were dying. They may not have been the types of people you care about (elderly, immune compromised, disabled) but they were dying and hospitals could not keep up. It was a desperate attempt to try to slow the spread so that hospitals weren’t so overwhelmed with COVID patients they could serve others with non-COVID emergencies.

The vaccines do decrease the severity and chance of needing hospitalization or if dying.

Yes, most healthy adults would be fine. Most healthy kids are fine. But you do realize kids have adult and older teachers who may have health issues? That they may live with at-risk relatives?

Whenever I hear your argument I just hear “I only care about healthy people”.

DHs best friend. They were super close. He was ex-military and a bit of a homesteader which I’m sure are risk factors but nothing could have prepared us for how absolute nuts he went in 2020.

Full on conspiracy theory about COVID. This was a man with a PhD in sociology and now he’s spouting racist conspiracy theories and comparing the COVID safety protocols to what it felt like to be George Floyd and he as suffocated. I wish I was kidding. It just got worse and worse and he started making threats to random people then to local government officials. He was stockpiling weapons and trying to get people to move to his property to “prepare”. He was arrested in 2022 for burying amo in public park and haven’t heard a word from him or his wife since…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of them acknowledge, in released emails, to manipulating press coverage and suppressing scientific work, in order to cancel actual experts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration.

"Most" public health officials "acknowledged" an effort to suppress the Great Barrington Declaration? That's quite the conspiracy.

"Most" of the "experts" who set policy were at the NIH and CDC and yes, their private emails do the above, even though they didn't say this in public at the time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't think it's weird her reputation was destroyed because she doubted the value of vaccine mandates?

She went from "questioning" vaccine mandates to stuff about microchips, North Korean style police states, WEF etc.

Well, Musk is literally trying to put microchips in people. That's not crazy at this point. We will probably all have chips in us in our lifetime. And North Korea does exist and is a nutty police state. And WEF has incredibly ambitious goals. None of this sounds nuts.

Most of what people were being censored for is now commonly accepted as fact. Things like: the covid vaccine won't prevent you from getting covid. Mask efficacy is debatable. Children aren't at great risk from covid. There will be negative consequences from shutting schools and businesses. It's okay to go jogging outside without a mask on, you won't get or pass covid from that. These things were so incredibly controversial during covid that they could not be said in mixed company. Looking back, who looks crazier? The people who said it would be fine for us to open schools like virtually the rest of the planet. Or the ones who insisted these benign ideas were dangerous and "going to get people killed!"

Anonymous wrote:You don't think it's weird her reputation was destroyed because she doubted the value of vaccine mandates?

She went from "questioning" vaccine mandates to stuff about microchips, North Korean style police states, WEF etc.

Anonymous wrote:I have a "friend" who basically transformed from a super-progressive to a Q-adjacent conspiracy theorist. All over vaccine mandates. She dramatically changed in about 4 weeks. She's destroyed her reputation and ruined relationships. It was certainly very strange to witness.

You don't think it's weird her reputation was destroyed because she doubted the value of vaccine mandates?

I am now questioning it all. Was completely fine vaccinating and did everything right in terms of isolating etc. But I think the whole anti vax movement took a Great Leap Forward because of Covid.

I don’t understand . What conspiracies does she believe in? Questioning institutions is not being a conspiracy theorist

Anonymous wrote:Most of them acknowledge, in released emails, to manipulating press coverage and suppressing scientific work, in order to cancel actual experts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration.

"Most" public health officials "acknowledged" an effort to suppress the Great Barrington Declaration? That's quite the conspiracy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well my "Naomi Wolf" believes:

- That the public health officials were planning for permanent lockdowns

- That car crashes where people have Covid deaths are being marked as Covid deaths

- That the unvaccinated are being denied their human rights and that "the unvaccinated" are a group that should be given human rights protections just as being Black or Muslim or LGBT should etc.

I don't think she presented any serious evidence for any of these arguments.

Oh gosh. I had a friend who felt like she could truly understand oppression and discrimination because a resort she wanted to go to was requiring proof of vaccines when they first became available. White woman. One incident of being required to show vax card, and she's acting like she knows what the Holocaust was like.

What's even crazier...this person is a Black woman (daughter of African immigrants) and was very involved in her local BLM (though not anymore).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a few people who turned out this way, including my ex. All very smart and well educated.

There are two common traits that I can point to. One is a very black and white thinking, no grey whatsoever. E.g., if you can’t give a 100% guarantee that X is safe, it means that X is unsafe, and how dare you? The other is that they ARE probably smarter than an average person and they have an independent streak which leads them to center their identity around “not being a sheep” and believe they can “do their own research”, etc.

Add the internet echo chambers in the mix, and there you go.

That could be a point of vulnerability. They're smarter than the average person but not as intelligent and informed as the actual experts. So they're just better at creating justifications.

Naomi Wolf was warning about the loss of civil liberties during COVID. She wasn't saying that COVID didn't exist, or anything like that. She was consistent in saying that people should have bodily autonomy, just like most of you would argue, if faced with abortion restrictions.

I would also question the "actual experts" who you listened to during the pandemic. Most of them acknowledge, in released emails, to manipulating press coverage and suppressing scientific work, in order to cancel actual experts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Their motives might have been well-meaning, but they definitely did not behave as scientists. At the time, they refused to admit to any limitations of knowledge and since, have refused to apologize for the damage that they caused. Hence, their credibility as "experts" is ruined. Finally, Anthony Fauci was never, and I repeat, never trained in public health or policy. He is an immunologist who briefly practiced medicine before becoming a lab scientist and bureaucrat. He is an expert in some things, but they do not include public health, epidemiology or the Constitution. So, I am totally fine with Naomi Wolf questioning his actions.

Somewhere I have a letter from her dad. He was a little odd, and I’ve always wondered if he was a good dad or not.

He was forward.

Anonymous wrote:Well my "Naomi Wolf" believes:

- That the public health officials were planning for permanent lockdowns

- That car crashes where people have Covid deaths are being marked as Covid deaths

- That the unvaccinated are being denied their human rights and that "the unvaccinated" are a group that should be given human rights protections just as being Black or Muslim or LGBT should etc.

I don't think she presented any serious evidence for any of these arguments.

Oh gosh. I had a friend who felt like she could truly understand oppression and discrimination because a resort she wanted to go to was requiring proof of vaccines when they first became available. White woman. One incident of being required to show vax card, and she's acting like she knows what the Holocaust was like.