The anti-vaccine paranoia is part of a generally clabbered and toxic political culture of antagonism toward — and neurotic distrust of — essential institutions. But the problem is that the paranoiacs have a point — there is good reason not to automatically trust the IRS, or the local board of education, or the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci. Not only has such trust not been earned, in many cases it has been forfeited.

This leaves us in a catch-22: The more trust, cooperation, and honesty we have in our community life, the less surveillance, enforcement and intrusion we need to secure public safety and good order. But the heavy-handedness and dishonesty of those entrusted with the management of our critical institutions has undermined the public’s faith in them — and, instead of trying to correct that through institutional reforms oriented toward credibility and transparency, our social engineers and our expert classes have responded instead with more heavy-handedness and surveillance, and less transparency and accountability.

The anti-vax stuff is baloney, but it didn’t come out of nowhere.