[Someone]

”and they can't even learn ahead of time what they might need to know in a pandemic.”

They can, but why would they? The power of society is that we work together. You don’t need to know how to grow wheat, bake bread, or herd cows anymore, either, but that doesn’t make us simpletons.

[nonwifehaver3]

I looked into some recent disease-related misinformation (re Zika) and honestly it would be hard for many people to look at it and immediately say why it was wrong (it was extremely wrong). It wasn't like "putting Vaseline under your nose stops you from getting the flu". So I don't think people can really be prepared for everything ahead of time & there has to be some authority.

I still think that the key problem is that people distrust health and government institutions, not that they're allowed (for now) to post quackery or misinformation. I don't really understand how one gets that way. There are perceptions that public health institutions are politicized. Maybe they've never been friends with a doctor or a health official. Maybe their trust has been broken re health or even some other part of government. You can delete someone's posts pretty easily, but you can't force someone to trust the CDC or whoever. It needs to be built over time.