This is, once again, transparent projection: in April 2022, researchers estimated that a quarter of the one million Americans deaths from Covid-19 “could have been prevented with primary series vaccination.” A quarter of a million people dead who could have been saved had they gotten the shots. The responsibility for that catastrophic loss rests, in significant part, with the people who have spread dangerous lies about vaccines that, while not risk-free, are remarkably safe and effective at reducing Covid’s severity. Still, we should probably acknowledge that the decision at many media outlets to downplay or outright ignore rare adverse vaccine reactions may have helped drive people to shoddier sources. When editors and journalists steer clear of important topics for fear that their audiences can’t cope with complex truths, it doesn’t throttle conspiracies—it fuels them.

SEED: Potential essay angle: how media avoidance of complex truths fuels rather than suppresses conspiracy theories — a paradox worth unpacking.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 389