Part of what they are saying is that they distrust mainstream media sources. Which if I were to rephrase as the for-profit media that aims to maximize engagement regardless of the long-term effects upon the user, would that help it become more understandable? The media lies, some portions of it more than others, and even when it tells the truth it does so in a manner that is highly skewed towards maximizing their profits.

And then the whole “people say” gets even worse, because who vets those people? During the pandemic, literal doctors were prescribing Ivermectin and telling people to avoid the vaccine, and there was a huge conspiracy theory about Dr. Fauci.

Normal people can’t understand the science on their own, are too busy with their lives to learn, and also they simply don’t want to. But they’re not entirely wrong - you really can’t trust what “people say” (e.g. they also say to buy crypto) - and that germ of truth is what helped sell the lie.

i.e. the disinformation peddlers were quite strategic in predating upon our weaknesses, where “news” would do things like talk about Donald Trump nonstop, which gave him millions of dollars of free publicity, and helped him get elected (the first time I mean, but probably also the second).

So “we” are not blameless here either, if we turn a blind eye to the faults on one side and simply would rather blame “the other side” as if that were all that were needed to explain the entirety of the situation. That is a comforting lie, an “alternative fact” if you will. I may not have explained this well, but I hope you see what I was trying to say.