Seth Mnookin

Recurring infection Misha Angrist in conversation with Seth Mnookin, author of 'The Panic Virus'

So grateful to Misha Angrist for this interview with @sethmnookin.bsky.social, author of the 2011 book THE PANIC VIRUS. The present makes far better sense through the lens of the past.

New from @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/issue-490/

MA: You have a chapter on RFK Jr. titled “Conspiracy of Dunces.” SM: At the time I thought, “This is so ridiculous that maybe I shouldn’t even include it.” I wanted to avoid making the people who were concerned about vaccines look ridiculous. And one of the conclusions that I reached was that the reason you saw this vaccine hesitancy arising in a population affected by autism was that this was a population that had not been treated well by the medical establishment. I was trying to bring some empathy to that. And so I was concerned that bringing in characters like RFK Jr. and showing his absolute disregard for reality... I thought, “This is a little bit too over the top. Maybe I should leave this out?” I was completely wrong, obviously. If you had said to me then that in a decade and a half, RFK Jr. was going to be in charge of medical, scientific, and health policy in the U.S. I would have said, “You are out of your effing mind. That’s the equivalent of saying that in 15 years, RFK Sr. is going to come back from the dead and be president.” It shows my own lack of imagination and my lack of understanding about some of the underlying forces at work here.

This interview with author @sethmnookin.bsky.social ('The Panic Virus', 2011) is so good. A reminder that the fash work very hard to make us forget what happened even recently, forcing people to reason like goldfish

by Misha Angrist at @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/issue-490/

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Man Who Debunked RFK Jr. Long Ago Describes His 'Whack-A-Mole' Candidacy "Describing his views as ‘controversial,’ I think, is dishonest," author Seth Mnookin said of the long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful.

I talked to @huffpost.bsky.social’s @mattshuham.bsky.social about RFK Jr's loony conspiracies, the last decade of anti-vaccine rhetoric, and the difficulty American media has with responsibly covering dangerous, discredited views: