Public Health Advocates Are So Desperate for Help Against Conspiracies They've Turned to the Place You'd Least Expect

Last month's Senate grilling of Dr. Anthony Fauci, if viewed by an audience that had not been subjected to years of propaganda, would be staggeringly strange.

There were hissing accusations of lies, corruption, and megalomania; comparisons to sadistic Nazi scientists; and statements, as if of undisputed fact, that Fauci killed millions of people. The nation's most powerful Republicans, without any significant pushback, joined forces to shout down and criminally pursue the face of the COVID pandemic's health authority based on wild, speculative, and facile conspiracy theories. It all prompted a kind of deeply existential question: If this is how we now treat a onetime pandemic hero, what will happen the next time we face a similar public health crisis?...