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).
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.