Learning to live with the madness: Péter Krekó on vaccine reluctance and political calculation

Gagarin, the Eurozine podcast

Behind vaccine hesitancy and the skyrocketing of bogus medicine, lies a motivated rejection of science, and the effects of a decades-long campaign waged against climate science and medicine. Political scientist Péter Krekó offers a way to understand why public health has become such a battleground of beliefs, and why rationality is not a straight antidote. This episode has an extended version available to Eurozine's Patrons here: https://www.patreon.com/Eurozine In the full conversation, we look into what effect the vaccines will have on the soon upcoming Hungarian elections, and whether there is an antidote to junk science and commercial bogus. Péter Krekó is the director of the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital Institute, Hungary. He is also a former Europe’s Futures fellow of Eurozine’s long-time collaborator, the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. He has written extensively in Eurozine on conspiracy theories and disinformation, and their implications for the pandemic. Find Péter Krekó's latest article, 'Mutations of science in the pandemic' in Eurozine: https://www.eurozine.com/mutations-of-science-in-the-pandemic/ And his further articles: https://www.eurozine.com/authors/peter-kreko/ Read more from Eurozine's focal point 'Endemic: when emergency is the norm': https://www.eurozine.com/focal-points/endemic/ Please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review so more people can find us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, so you’ll always know what’s worth thinking about: https://www.eurozine.com/newsletter/