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If you are a contrarian who sees yourself as consistently able to identify contrary but true positions, covid19 offers the exciting chance to take contrary positions and then be proven right in just a few months. As opposed to typically taking decades or more to be shown right.
But, what if non-contrarian conformists know that (certain types of) contrarians can often be more right, but conformists see that they tend to win by getting more attention & affirmation in the moment by staying in the Overton window and saying stuff near what most others think at the time?
In that case conformists may usually tolerate & engage contrarians exactly because they know contrarians take so long to be proven right. So if conformists see that now contrarians will be proven right fast, they may see it as in their interest to more strictly shun contrarians.
Consider Europe at WWI start. Many had been anti-war for decades, but that contrarian view was suddenly suppressed much more than usual. Conformists knew that skeptical views of war might be proven right in just a few years. Contrarians lost on average, even though proven right.
Humans may well have a common norm of liberally tolerating contrarians when the stakes are low and it would take decades to be proven right, but shunning and worse to contrarians when stakes are high and events are moving fast.
Crush Contrarians Time?
How is your "infect people deliberately" and "infect people gently" extreme contrarianism going to be proven right, though?
I for one don't think much anyone will try it, save for maybe some of your readers getting themselves infected in a very ill controlled way (e.g. when handling the materials).
The ordinary mortality rate of this disease is quite low, especially in healthy individuals who might try self experimenting, so the utility is dominated by probability of increasing the mortality risk.
And if attempted, I don't see how it would possibly out-race actual vaccines (already in the testing phase).
Determining the dose, testing safety, testing efficacy, that all is made immensely more difficult by having potential for infecting non participants such as e.g. hospital workers when a participant needs to be intubated.
Manufacturing is as or more difficult (live virus, stringent dose controls).
Far far smaller therapeutic window (if it even got a therapeutic window at all, which isn't a given), that's more lengthy experiments. Efficacy studies are particularly lengthy.
My concern is solely that people get hurt because of irresponsible contrarianism, I don't see it as a realistic possibility that you can get proven right about any of that.
I guess the one appeal is that you can be contrarian and not be proven wrong if nobody tries.
"But, what if non-contrarian conformists know that (certain types of) contrarians can often be more right, but conformists see that they tend to win by getting more attention & affirmation in the moment by staying in the Overton window and saying stuff near what most others think at the time?"
This is a great analysis, but one thing (I think?) you're leaving out is that contrarians may often be more right, but they also may often be more wrong. When the stakes are high, their wrongness is a big risk, so that's also a reason conformists could want to muzzle contrarians.