Always been true. The old saying about the lie traveling halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on is an old saying for a reason. Alas. The truth requires marshaling of evidence; the lie requires only the marshaling of plausible preconceptions.
Well, yes, it requires the marshalling of evidence. But in some cases I think we think that it requires a 1.000 batting average, and therefore we should do everything possible to make people think we have a 1.000 batting average. I recently wrote the below to someone, and I think posting it here is a bit of an illustration. I might not be dead on the money regarding methods of propaganda, but I know this is something that bugged me personally about the approach and therefore probably bugged others as well.
"A few weeks ago in the grocery store I overheard a conversation between two people who clearly knew each other about the vaccine. Someone said "what these idiots don't realize is that
the vaccine was never about preventing the disease, it's all about reducing symptoms." I came embarrassingly close to stopping and injecting myself into the conversation. I'm sorry, what? The vaccine was never about preventing the disease? Look up any talking point from the last 6 months. Seriously. Is your memory that bad? Are you simply not paying attention to anything that's been told to you? The vaccine was
all about actual effectiveness, and it was effective for awhile, and then... not so much. Now people are trying to retrofit history to say it was "never about that" - and you wonder why people push back with their own unfounded conspiracy theories.
Drinking your own urine and taking horse dewormer because you know more about the Coronavirus than doctors is very, very dumb. But there's something to be learned from the method of communication. It's not "shut up and take your shot." It's "here, check out this interesting information." If everyone that's not completely convinced were treated like an adult capable of intaking and processing information instead of a body told to "shut up and take the shot", people might actually be convinced of the decent medical evidence out there that says the vaccine helps. Being told "it was never about preventing the disease" is a lie, and therefore makes people less likely to believe you when you're not lying. Sometimes having a bit of humility in saying "hey we're trying to catch a moving train here and something we thought 6 months ago is proving not to be true, here's what we're thinking now and if we want to beat this together we'd love buy-in. We can't guarantee every step we take will be the right one, but we can promise we are doing the best we can with the info we have to fix this for as many people as possible." Promise that'd get a higher vax rate in the US."
The conspiracy theory side is wrong about a lot of things. But they do a lot more "treating people like an adult" than the science side does - at least in my opinion. They don't try to explain away times in the past they've been wrong, they just let them fade out of public memory.
Now, granted, they have less momentum to overcome, since "not doing anything" is always easier than "doing something", and in the case of people in charge of public health their job is to convince people to "do something." But still, lessons to be learned IMO.
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