Yes, they (you) aren't anti-science. They're just indifferent to it when political ideology conflicts with low science literacy. Re the opioid crisis -> vaccine distrust that argument is so vague you could make it about anything, including global warming. The details actually matter. Conditional, informed trust is rational, not an insidious "they".
I'd argue that trust is never rational. Trust is a feeling, basically one of the irreducible qualia that furnish our conscious experience. You can rationalize it post-hoc, but really if you are honest a state of trust is never arrived at by a deliberative or deductive process, the foundation is almost always experiential. The argument about global warming is low quality, there are obvious parallels between distrust of medical authority caused by bad experiences with family or friends getting addicted to prescribed painkillers, and distrust of the same medical authority regarding vaccines now. The unfortunate reality is you cannot create trust as easily as you can destroy it.
edit:
to expand on "political ideology", it's not a coincidence that populist politics, what Mark Blyth calls global Trumpism
disproportionately produces vaccine hesitancy/skepticism
is correlated with vaccine hesitancy you wanted to say? Well I agree with the conclusion of that article at least:
Vaccine hesitancy and political populism are driven by similar dynamics: a profound distrust in elites and experts. It is necessary for public health scholars and actors to work to build trust with parents that are reluctant to vaccinate their children, but there are limits to this strategy. The more general popular distrust of elites and experts which informs vaccine hesitancy will be difficult to resolve unless its underlying causes-the political disenfranchisement and economic marginalisation of large parts of the Western European population-are also addressed.
but note that this is about vaccine hesitancy regarding tried-and-tested vaccines for kids. Not about our current situation, which is different. Still, the article points the finger at the right people.
another similar line is the "joker-fication" of politics, or what is called chaos-seeking orientation in this presentation here:
https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.io/jec58/?direct&mode=render&action=download&mode=render (implying inequality, precarity capitalism, opportunity/dream hoarding is an indirect driver)
Don't have time right now to watch this, but seems interesting, I might watch it later and comment. I'd say that most political protests are motivated by anger and thus carry within them a version of 'chaos-seeking', nihilistic, destructive tendencies. Although it's never pretty, it sometimes is necessary to 'sway' the powers that be.
which often combine with "alternative" beliefs about science and medicine a la:
this last article is also about vaccine hesitancy regarding tried and tested vaccines for kids, and thus the findings should not be extrapolated to the current situation. Other than that, it also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem:
This should represent a call to action for all who value a rational and evidence-based society; to strengthen science literacy in schools, to increase engagement of scientists with the community, and to promote confidence in scientific institutions. Calling for broadscale social initiatives to promote science might seem overly optimistic, especially in the current political climate. However, it is our view that only through building a cultural foundation that values and trusts reason and science, that the public can be innoculated against highly contagious and toxic ideas like vaccine scepticism.
Trust is not built through education. Trust is built through trustworthy behaviour. Pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals have fallen woefully short of this yardstick in recent times, and are thus reaping the bitter fruits of their own shenanigans. Fix it by publicly apologizing and paying reperations for missteps like the opioid crisis, not by calling people idiots for not trusting you.