also, tangentially, I think that blanket distrust of authorities is just as irrational as blanket trust. it should really depend on the situation which is why it's by no means cognitive dissonance to trust authorities in some respects but not in others.
Cognitive dissonance comes from encountering something that goes against your confirmation bias, and runs the risk of knee jerk reactions.
Example of knee jerk reaction: the GP's example of the article (and possibly you) conflating a doctor who says "maybe we should slow down" with anti-vaxxers.
It doesn't really change the fact that both have no real evidence to provide for their claims and are promoting practices that, if not well-supported, are clearly dangerous.
But more importantly, Bob Sears's opinion on e.g. measles doesn't even matter because we're talking about covid19 right now and there is no vaccine yet, so there is no way to "slow down". By contrast, what he does offer in the context of this new disease are recommendations such as "boosting your immune system" which are patently laughable, see: https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/what-can-you-d...
edit: I'll have to correct myself, Bob Sears didn't say that (at least not in this context), his cohost did. I do assume we'd know if he disagreed though.
I mean, the govt could do it, if they weren't in the pockets of the corps.
What I'm saying is that if you're waiting for the pharma corps to provide the necessary studies to show their products ineffective or even dangerous, I'd call you a fool. Or do you have a few billion dollars lying around to fund such studies?
Of course, you also choose to ignore how many people don't die anymore from totally curable diseases that were a certain death sentence even just decades ago (e.g. take AIDS).
I think a cornerstone of curious discussion should actually be understanding, rather than villainizing, viewpoints that lead a person to a cognitively dissonant state, but that is not what I observe, even among very well educated people.
I think it's concerning to have thought leaders like Bill Gates spouting lines like "it won’t be normal until we get an amazing vaccine to the entire world."[1] Clearly high-risk sections of the population (health care workers, elderly, sick) should be prioritized, but to rush a vaccine across the entire population invites a lot of risks. For some groups, prioritizing drug treatment and improved healthcare practices might be better. Or perhaps not! -- but we should be able to have these discussions without being dismissed as insane conspiracy theorists.
We all have confirmation bias, (perhaps I'd feel differently if I had experienced a COVID-19 infection) but I see articles like this as a preemptive dismissal of opposing viewpoints, an invocation of blind trust that potentially leads us to a dark place, particularly when combined with new mass surveillance vectors like app-based contact tracing.
[1]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/bill-gates-says-that-thin...