This has been the most astonishing fact of life that has come out of Covid. Blown away by discovering the same. I think a whole lot of humans must have discovered this fact for the first time in their life.
I try to listen to as many different perspectives as possible, look up claims I hear being made, listen to experts in the respective fields and err on the side of caution.
Back in March when medical experts said masks are unlikely to help I was like "okay well that sucks but they know much more about this kind of thing so I will just keep my distance, etc". Then when some data showed that actually masks do seem to help I didn't argue. I listened to the reasons for the change in advice and it all sounded, to me at least, perfectly reasonable. Yet I still hear people saying medical experts are "flip flopping" on masks as if changing ones advice based on new, scientifically backed information is a bad thing.
Highly intelligent people I know have made comments to me about masks, 5G, Bill Gates microchip vaccines, "Plandemic" and all that kind of stuff.
Sadly I have a (second) aunt that has been sucked into the QAnon madness. She honest to god believes the election was stolen from Trump. She isn't even American! She is a lamb farmer in Wales that still believes Brexit is going to be the best thing ever. But that is a conversation for a different thread.
I am just mentally exhausted from it all. I miss the days of moon landing and what really goes on at Area 51 conspiracies.
And here I keep getting told IQ is the measure of competence