If we look back on US public health policy it wasn't really a liberal democracy until maybe about 1970 given such strong government institutions that shut down dissent. It turns out that the US back to the polio vaccine forcibly vaccinated many, many populations. The demographic differences in the groups affected were interesting - the primary resistance came from the black community that distrusted the government. We can go back to the Spanish Flu period and it turns out that we had the same exact problems of 2020 in terms of popular public health policy debate as well with anti-maskers and pro-maskers.
The problems I see is that public discourse has become the same thing as the old Internet in all the bad ways from decades past with almost none of the good parts. Bad faith arguments, Godwin's Law everywhere, slippery slope fallacies everywhere, etc. are now _standard_ and expected making all but the simplest discussions impossible.
The problems I see is that public discourse has become the same thing as the old Internet in all the bad ways from decades past with almost none of the good parts. Bad faith arguments, Godwin's Law everywhere, slippery slope fallacies everywhere, etc. are now _standard_ and expected making all but the simplest discussions impossible.