The real tragedy is that both sides see eachother as stupid and uninformed. Conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers will not spare words to describe 'us' as sheep or idiots either. So any effort to 'educate' the other will only lead to greater divide.

I live in a country (Slovenia) where the government took somewhat reasonable measures in spring but then completely discredit itself by using the pandemic for ruthless hoarding & corruption. This poured oil on fire of conspiracy theories and other forms of covid-disobedience. Some quasi celebrity influencers saw this as an oppurtunity to get as many followers as they could by taking the lead. One of them even moved to Sweeden as an example and now reports from there as from the "Promissed land" you mentioned (bravo for that example). As the government collapsed onto itself our mortality numbers are through the roof... Thank you for this article, I couldn't have written it better myself.