Yes, the anti-vaxx (and anti-government) sentiment has received an enormous boost from this, time will tell what the damage is but a resurgence of things like Polio is not out of the question.

> I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths.

I'm partially ok with that. They really should give out a double helping of advice: one that is dumbed down for those that lack the necessary background, one that is more on the level for those interested or that do have the necessary background. As it is the dumbed down version is all we've got and the result is that it is too easy to poke holes in it.

At the same time, some of the under-preparedness would have been much harder to deal with without the occasional white lie, it stopped a lot of profiteering and kept some items in supply when otherwise there would have been a run on them.

> But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want.

Yes, and fwiw I think those people should have gone to jail. We're working on a couple of those cases here NL at the moment and I'm really curious what the outcome will be.