Smokers and the obese are largely based in reality.

The smokers aren't linking nicotine patches to government microchip implants, and the obese aren't staying fat to try to block out the 5G signals.

Have you considered that some of the crazy sounding people might be intentionally associating crazy ideas with a counter establishment movement? So that the movement is discredited by association.

The establishment has a clear incentive to do this, I would be kind of surprised if they were so pure as to abstain from it. Sure, some gullible people actually go along with the crazy, but I think those are likely a small minority of the counter establishment movements by people count.

The transitive negative social vibes of the crazy ideas makes non-crazy people reluctant to discuss such counter establishment movements in public. E.g. perfectly rational reasons to be cautious about a new vaccine platform are drowned out by and associated with crazy ideas about microchips and 5G, like you say.

It's called " well poisoning".

You take a plausible idea and make it implausible by adding something crazy.

It is entirely rational to question whether you want to take an experimental medication ( odds are you shouldn't), so to discredit people with entirely rational questions about the safety the wildest voices were cultivated, the ones saying that it was 5G activated or magnetic.

That's a pretty prejudiced way to view people who decided not to get vaccinated. Have you met people who espouse those conspiratorial beliefs in real life?

I've only met one person I could consider an antivaxer. We found out she possibly didn't give her second child the usual childhood shots because her first child cried a lot from them.

They can be pretty seriously in denial, trying to pretend it's not a problem because it's too hard to do something about.