There was a comment a few years ago, during the height of Trump and COVID, that basically said “You all remember when that Large Hadron Collider experiment went off and they said it was totally okay? You sure about that?”
I think it hits the same idea you’ve got. And I know this is crazy, but several years back (at a completely different time), I had the same feeling you’re describing. I woke up with the feeling like there’d been a switch thrown and now reality was on a different track