Let’s travel back to simpler times, 2019 and earlier. In the years before COVID (BC), beliefs about respiratory viruses were not intertwined with people’s core identities. Preventions and treatments could be studied scientifically without people lining up ahead of time to either believe or disbelieve the evidence according to whether it aligned with their political allegiances. Grant-giving agencies were willing to finance high-quality research because they wanted to know the truth about whether or not, or the extent to which, a given intervention could promote health and ultimately save lives.
