Hacker News

I think there's a few things going on.

On one side, you have Americans that have deep-rooted anti-intellectualism. You see this as the myriad of anti-woke, anti-vax, anti-science attitudes. These ideas aren't grounded in anything useful or real, but leaders in the far-right find these attitudes useful in various ways for pushing their cause. I don't think there's an actual goal of promoting disease necessarily... it's more that the further right-wingers can push people into extreme points of view, the easier it is to keep them there. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of drivel in the anti-woke/anti-science sphere today became popular due to clickbait engagement, though, this movement has been promoted generally by the right wing for a long time.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there's some aspect of foreign influence going on as well. Russia has been working for decades at destabilizing the US. The spreading of disease here would definitely work towards that goal, so long as it doesn't generate a new pandemic that might bite them too.