And there are loads of examples through history up till current day that show that blindly trusting authorities is naive. Heck, even in the article, some doctors were poisoning their patients with iodine. It is not far fetched that some people in these areas were informed of these problems. So a tiny amount kills us... and so you are saying any even tinier amount will save us. I'd be pretty skeptical too.

It seems that when presented well and with personally verifiable evidence, people were willing to accept.

I am really flabbergasted when people blindly accept in mass what authorities tell us.

I don't question the initiative.

The article just read like it was some strange illness that affected Switzers around a certain time.

I think it comes from a generalised distrust of governments/big institutions. Which comes from hearing (often heavily distorted) stories about things like Tuskegee Syphilis, MKULTRA, CIA vaccinators in Afghanistan and Thalidomide.