People Have Been Incorrectly Skeptical of the Vaccine for a Full Year Now

This didn’t just begin.

One of my favorite 2021 activities is to go back and look at the headlines from exactly one year ago. 2021 hasn’t been anything like normal, but 2020 was so absurd and terrifying and surreal on a daily basis that there’s value, I think, in looking back with some perspective on every ludicrous event. One year ago today, the President (who was Donald Trump! Donald Trump about to have was about to have his Person Woman Camera TV interview while mocking people for wearing masks, Goya beans became an actual political hot potato and Major League Baseball was about to start its truncated, fan-free season. And things were about to get even weirder. I’m not sure we’ll ever entirely process 2020.

But I did come across a fascinating story from the front page of The New York Times. One year ago, the Times was reporting on … vaccine skepticism. The skeptics of the rapidly developing vaccines weren’t Tucker Carlson viewers at the time. They were, in fact, people who hated Donald Trump and did not trust him not to rush a vaccine just to win re-election.

“The bottom line is I have absolutely no faith in the F.D.A. and in the Trump administration,” said Joanne Barnes, a retired fourth-grade teacher from Fairbanks, Alaska, who said she was…