There are medical professionals that say ridiculous things and make poor health choices and spread bad information too, so the fact that someone treats patients doesn't guarantee that their take on a situation is solid gold either. There was a national story a few months back about a pharmacist in a major hospital near me who left a bunch of C19 vaccine out of refrigerator on purpose in an effort to destroy it because he subscribed to all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories. The fact that he worked in a hospital didn't make him immune to misinformation and disinformation, or keep him from doing something that could harm others' health. I think people's knowledge and expertise should be judged on its own merits rather than just assume they do or don't know what they are talking about.
Let me preface this by stating that I have a scientific/engineering background. I went to Bronx Science, then studied electrical engineering in Princeton University. I also practiced the same for over 30 years as an independent consultant, and still do it as a hobby (I retired in 2017). Anyway, when I was in school I falsely assumed ALL scientists/engineers/doctors will only go where the data takes them, even against their own personal biases. Fact is most do, but you have a minority who can be persuaded to write official sounding papers with selective data to justify any viewpoint someone else may want. This has happened from the early days of science/medicine/engineering. Anyone recall Thomas Edison's attempts to discredit AC current? There's a great movie about that called
The Current War. But one smear on someone doesn't negate everything else they did. Edison produced a lot of things of value to society, and eventually came around to AC current simply because it's a technically superior solution.
So here comes this pandemic, and along with it lots of misinformation, some of it official sounding enough to convince a lot of laypeople, plus mixed messaging by those tasked with handling the pandemic on the official level. Evidently the pharmacist you mentioned got caught up in this misinformation campaign. My brother has some friends who are also. I have at least one neighbor who is the same.
bykfixer mentioned debates about facts. If something is truly an established fact, there can be no debate on it. The Earth is round. The moon orbits the Earth. Case closed. Nothing to debate. The problems occur when "facts" are changing on an almost daily basis due to evolving knowledge of a situation. That's really where we are now. Anyone with a background in science understands why the facts are evolving. It's because we're learning about this. Unfortunately, a fair segment of the population is uncomfortable with this concept of uncertainty. So they invent half-truths and conspiracy theories as alternate facts, then stick to these of their view of how things are, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. The more you try to tell them they're wrong, the deeper they dig in. Mixed messaging from official sources didn't help matters, either. I'll readily admit that I'm erring on the side of extreme caution with this virus precisely because of this. The official sources said if you're vaxxed you can go without a mask a few months ago. I never stopped wearing one just in case that advice was wrong. And here comes delta/omicron vindicating my level of caution.
kitrobaskin said this:
What gets me is when anyone talks about "We could have stopped COVID." or "We could stop COVID if.." That is human folly.
How about we conduct ourselves with consideration to others by lessening the spread so that hospitals are able to treat automobile accident victims, heart emergencies, and the like?
I say it's not human folly. We already had two other similar diseases, SARS and MERS, which were in fact stopped before they became endemic precisely through precautionary measures. We could have done the same with covid-19. Then you have the fact there are over three orders of magnitude difference in death rates between the countries which handled this the best versus those that handled it badly. Why? To some extent difference in population age and general health played a role. But so did the willingness of the population to heed the advice of experts, even if sometimes that advice erred far on the side of caution. Whether or not you believe we could have eradicated covid-19 in the wild, we certainly could have and can lessen the spread for exactly the reasons kitrobaskin mentions, namely so hospitals can treat people for other things besides covid.
I personally think after seeing this pandemic unfold that social engineering will play a larger part than medical science controlling future pandemics. What good are vaccines or other countermeasures if some large segment of the population can't be convinced to use them? That's where we are. Better science education will certainly help. So will more consistent messaging from those in charge. There was a time when a lot more of the population trusted expertise. Experts aren't always right, but trusting them advanced our society enormously in the first half of the 20th century. I wish we would go back to that.
