But the New York Times is getting a jump on stirring up the anti- 'anti-vax' hysteria that some of its most dedicated readers - super-uptight, Brooklyn-based, professional class, simps for former Deadspin staffers -  simply love to hate.

Anti-vaxxers inspire a singularly intense horror in the liberal imagination. While the NYT loves to pin the 'explosion' in the movement's popularity to 'far-right' hucksters, some of the worst outbreaks in recent years - for example: last year's measles outbreak - took hold in the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities of New York State and the surrounding area, not the communities of 'right-wing extremists' living in Idaho and other states in the west and south. However, like the old saying goes, "Nazis sell newspapers". NYT editors closely track which topics its readers love, and thinly sourced "news analysis" about the threat to society posed by the anti-vaccine movement in the age of COVID-19 is easy and cheap to produce.

In a Wednesday column written by popular author and magazine writer Kevin Roose, the paper dares to ask: "What if we get a Covid-19 vaccine and half the country refuses to take it?"

The viral popularity of "Plandemic", a factually dubious documentary about a former colleague of Dr. Fauci who clearly has an axe to grind against him, is alarming, Roose says, and certainly justifies such an extreme conclusion.