There seems to be no end of opinions in this Energizer-bunny COVID crisis -- it just keeps going and going. Why are there so many opinions? Why are there so many conspiracy theorists? I mean, look, there is little room to argue, "It just doesn't exist!" when we're at 44 million cases and 1.2 million deaths and counting. "It just doesn't exist!" ignores a rather large elephant in the room … called COVID. On the other hand, we're being told that Trump so badly handled this thing that it ought to be called "the Trump virus." "Biden, Biden, he's our man! He's the one who has a plan!" Well, I'm waiting. Oh, do the things we have been doing that aren't working? Good plan. And still it feels like we're all calling the shots, we're all trying to make the plays, we're all experts who need to be heard. Why is that?
Could it be that we cannot trust our experts? Could it be that we've gotten used to the "experts" telling us stuff that they now deny?
In late February the WHO issued guidance regarding the use of masks. Basically, the guidance was "Don't!" Leave it for healthcare workers. The U.S. Surgeon General tweeted, "STOP BUYING MASKS!" (All caps in the original). "They're not effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus." In March, Dr. Fauci told 60 Minutes, "There is no reason to be walking around with a mask." Healthy people didn't need masks. In fact, he warned that wearing a mask could have unintended consequences. Save the masks for the medical folks. Oh, and the vaccine will be ready for trial in the next two to three months.
Today if you tell people about this you can be in trouble. You're a hater, you're ignoring science, you're not listening to the experts. The experts, you know, whose views have reversed themselves more than once. Perhaps that's the problem. Perhaps it's that these experts -- people who really ought to be considered the ones to ask, the ones who should know -- present themselves as experts with expert knowledge and we must not question them ... even as they deny their own positions. If there was some sense of "We're not sure," if there had been some equivocation -- "to the best of our knowledge, understanding that we're learning as we're going" -- perhaps we would have said, "Oh, look, they really do know what they're talking about, even in their own recognition of their lack of omniscience."
Early on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers to "go on with your lives + get out on the town and in less than a month New York City had more COVID deaths than 9/11 deaths. In mid-March when a model and business woman suggested that a lockdown and wearing masks might deter the virus, she was mocked by the medical expert. "Unless you have read every scientific paper … you cannot argue with me on that." In early March they told us that masks and lockdowns wouldn't help. When the White House suggested we all wear masks, the CDC said we should, but only because they were told to. In July our national expert, Dr. Fauci, recommended everyone wear goggles or eye shields, and you know he was serious because he never, ever appeared wearing one himself.
Here's the point. There are a lot of people who have contracted COVID (about 0.6% of the world population) and, because of the numbers that have contracted it, a lot who have died of it (about 2.7% of those who contracted it or around 0.015% of the world population). This is serious. WebMD reported that COVID is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020 so far just behind heart disease and cancer. Don't let anyone tell you this isn't serious. And I'm not questioning science. The nature of that beast is "test, test, test to determine where you were wrong today and where you were wrong the day before." Always learning and never arriving at certainty. So it shouldn't be a surprise that everyday people might look around, consider the available information, and conclude, "I'm not sure I trust these so-called experts. They contradict themselves. Why should I trust them?" Our experts have done it to themselves. But we'll still have a certain crowd that demands that we "trust the experts" -- "If you don't wear a mask, you might just be a sociopath." -- even when the experts don't agree with each other … or their own positions.
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