Ramesh is right to note that the uptick in vaccine hesitancy is due not just to the overreaching, lying, and censoriousness of public-health authorities, but also to the opportunism and dishonesty of those who took to the stage the pandemic provided to them and spread wild and often flagrantly innumerate claims about the vaccine.
As in the complex process of political polarization, this dynamic makes it hard to identify a primary mover. Which came first: the overweening of public health or the overstated objections of dissenters from it?
My view tends to be that the cranks will always be with us, and it is incumbent on those in authority to deny them credibility. But, the dissenters have free will of their own — and, in this instance, could have made dissent more credible by narrowing it and eschewing hysteria.
I especially blame the Biden administration for floating such broad vaccine mandates. Those who, reasonably or not, wanted to avoid the vaccine were given a powerful motivation to find the best arguments against taking it. And human nature and the fallibility of our reasoning being what they are, it’s not a surprise that many of them sought the most hysterical or the most sinister explanation instead.