Free_Opinions

Assuming his stance wasn’t antivax, it could be argued that he could have done much more with his platform to push for vaccine adoption

Oh absolutely, but it's also pretty clear as why he didn't. He wanted the votes from the anti-vaxx/mask people too so being ambiquous about that is just a political game tactic. It's quite similar to how Kamala didn't seem to want to take a clear stance on Israel or the border situation for example because doing so would likely alienate a large part of her base.

he also told people to inject bleach and take dangerous doses of horse dewormer.

I'm not defending everything Trump has said about ivermectin. My argument is that this specific claim about telling people to take dangerous doses of it is incorrect. If you think I'm mistaken, then please provide me with the quote where he says this because I can't find it myself.

There was plenty false information about covid and the cures/treatments back then. "Masks don't protect you from the virus" "The vaccine gives you immunity" "Lab leak theory is conspiracy and xenophobic" etc. It was a moving target. We dealt with the information we had. Some of it turned out to be wrong, some right. I can't blame people for looking alternative treatments especially when for the longest time vaccines weren't even available.

In a context where you know this was after a relatively long period of him not doing that.

I don't agree with this. Operation warp speed was Trump's project. When it comes to COVID, I feel like he was pro-vaccine since the beginning. Back then it was also the democrats who were expressing scepticism about the safety of it because they didn't trust Trump and felt like the vaccine was rushed and not properly tested.

completely ignoring the mention of masks.

He has said sceptical things about masks that has caused distrust and conspiracies in the MAGA population. I don't see the need to defend him on that one.

they can dislike what you are saying and it can also be wrong, they aren’t mutually exclusive.

Sure, but what I mean is that simply being downvoted doesn't alone mean the information is incorrect and the opposite is true as well. There's comments in this tread with false info that's being upvoted.

He definitely downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic in the beginning. No disagreement there.

However I still don't quite agree with the suggestion that he's anti-vaxx. Operation warp speed was his pet-project after all. He has made some vaccine critical comments in the past but personally I never got that impression of him during the pandemic.

You can say that but can you back it up with evidence? Because if not, it's actually you whose spreading lies here.

Where have I said "no big deal"?

What have I lied about exactly?

What anti-vax claims has Trump made during or after covid?

Surely you can then point out where I've been engaging in bad faith here.

Oh it's definitely a right-wing thing but I wouldn't exactly blame Trump for all of it. He even got booed at his own rally for telling people to get vaccinated.

I don't think there's inherently anything wrong about scepticism towards new things like that. It's when the disnformation and conspiracies comes in that it turns kinda sinister.

Probably true that it's more common on the right - in the U.S. atleast.