The common person can be told the truth. The common people, plural, cannot.

That’s what most authorities believe and there is good reason to believe it.

People in groups are irrational and tribal in ways people are not if you speak to them one on one. We don’t scale well, cognitively speaking. A whole bunch of “game of telephone” distortions happen and a bunch of legacy instincts from when we were little squirrel looking things take over.

If you look at how militaries operate it’s basically a giant set of procedures and customs designed to suppress all that shit and allow people in groups to behave somewhat more rationally. At least for a while, or in a limited domain. It kind of works. But we don’t want all of society to operate like that because it also suppresses art, invention, experience, play, etc.

The tribal parts of our nature can also be soothed by having trust in a good clan chief who is handling things. Those people can say things like "we dont know but we're working on it" because people trust them (requires integrity). Since that is almost non-existant (certainly during covid) we only get the worst parts.

I believe we can do fairly well in addressing people in groups. People are irrational, but the probability distribution of "things we say" against "what people will think and do" can be modulated for the better. The bigger issue, I think, is that the authorities can't be trusted. In what world will you find even 100 people who will agree to hold truth, justice, blah blah in high regard, and actually execute on those words? Corruption in the leaders exacerbates the illness of irrationality in the people.

" is good reason to believe it."

The results of this belief seem to be pretty catastrophic. Trust against authorities has evaporated all over the world.

"People in groups are irrational and tribal in ways people are not if you speak to them one on one. "

Sure, but why precisely do you believe that lies / deliberate misinformation will work better in such situations?

Is anybody able to craft such misinformation so soothing and so believable that the vast majority of the population will accept it indefinitely?

If not, what happens when it becomes obvious that someone in a position of authority communicated dishonestly to the public?

Absolutely agree. I think of children as "people who don't know a lot right now". But really, we're all children to some extent. Children are always honed to look for inconsistencies, and if those inconsistencies aren't addressed, distrust builds up. "You said I can't be on my phone too long, so how come you're doing it?" Distrust leads to irrational judgements, often in a broad-brush pendulum swing towards the opposite position. Trust is built up painstakingly and organically. Distrust tears it all down instantly. As long as "the masses" (to which all of us, to some extent, belong) exhibit this asymmetry between trust and distrust, for the people who want to speak truly, the key is consistency. Never be (perceived as) the boy who cried wolf.