I thought of this when I was listening to the audiobook Enlightenment Now and they mentioned the estimated billions of lives that were saved by recent(ish) developments, many of which involved vaccines and protocols like washing hands, sterilizing instruments, etc.

But thanks to idiots like Brainworms and our failure to properly impress on younger generations just how far we have come....we are likely to have a setback. I've already seen the stats on measles are staggering thanks to vaccine denialism.

This.

To add, today we can easily find that AI generated reports are pointing to articles that don't exist. But the more things continue as they are, the more we will eventually have to sift through thousands of garbage articles in mainstream publications that are not putting in enough effort to weed out fakes.

There are too many AI-derived studies and articles being submitted for publication for humans to fact check them all. Some will slip through the cracks, and these will eventually pile up to justify whatever post-truth scenario someone wants to cite. Or worse, publications will start using AI to fact check for them, and all safeguards are off.