DECODED: The "Restoring Trust" Paradox
Are Dishonest Refrains Trustworthy Behavior?
You have almost certainly heard this refrain in one form or another from pandemic commentators such as Emily Oster, Leana Wen, Vinay Prasad, Jay Bhattacharya, and others about how “trust in public health was lost during the COVID-19 pandemic,” or the importance of “restoring trust.” Here is a well-documented scam artist & abusive creep insisting that he is “building trust” by attacking vaccines:
Before Congress just the other day, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya lazily threw out MAHA’s latest meme, “bu-buh...but Denmark!” No, seriously:
“Denmark has strong trust in public health. That’s what we’re trying to do. Re-establish that public trust.”
Denmark is a nation of 6 million people, largely homogenous, and has a universal healthcare system that doesn’t bankrupt its citizens or drive them into the arms of wellness grifting scam artists. What Denmark certainly lacks is a constant stream of headlines of childish, unprofessional antics at the leadership of their equivalents to the FDA, NIH, and CDC. You know, the sort of reporting you would see if someone was acting in an untrustworthy manner.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch of Misleading Narratives
What Podcast Jay & the COVID Contrarian ilk don’t want you to know is that the vast majority of Americans didn’t think too much about public health as a whole prior to 2020. COVID-19 was the first infectious disease pandemic for nearly all of us. There was hardly blind trust, but more of a collective apathy beyond getting kids routine vaccinations. What these commentators are really doing here is a manipulative refrain that borders on cartoon logic.
You’re meant to believe that clumsy scientists engineered the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that mustache twirling doctors sought to corrupt an entire generation of children by advocating for masks and vaccines, and public health officials sought to seize political power by exploiting an imagined crisis. There’s a ridiculous double standard at play here. Doctors, scientists, and public health officials all need to be viewed with suspicion, constantly looking over their shoulder out of fear, while those who casually throw out these sorts of allegations and regularly get basic facts wrong are to be blindly assumed as noble and trustworthy truth-tellers.
You’re supposed to ignore an overwhelming torrent of well-funded propaganda designed to mislead the public and instead blame doctors and scientists for being targeted by much of these bad-faith attacks. Forget civic democracy and open debate, we should let lecherous billionaires influence and dictate the nation’s response to a generational crisis. Who know who truly needs an advocate in America? The viruses that can make us very sick, disabled, and even kill us.
Just Whom Among Us Is Trustworthy?
Those who pretend to be “restoring trust” by attacking American science and medicine imply that they are arbiters of what is trustworthy behavior. What do their own records have to say about this?
When Leana Wen granted legitimacy to the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 deaths were being overcounted in the Washington Post, instead accurately reporting how they were actually being undercounted at 15-30%, was she acting in a trustworthy manner?
When Emily Oster profited by falsely claiming that COVID-19 wasn’t transmitted in schools, or foolishly telling parents to merely treat it was just another flu or cold, is this the words of a reliable judge of what is trustworthy?
When NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya spent years childishly branding so many as “Covidian” cultists, is that how trust is earned?
When FDA Commissioner Marty Makary insisted that the COVID-19 vaccines killed countless children based on anecdotes, is that to be considered trustworthy behavior from a public official?
Was the constant stream of expletive-filled outbursts by the FDA’s Vinay Prasad at dozens upon dozens of targets anything more than obnoxious social media antics?
Back in 2013, as Emily Oster was making the rounds to promote her book claiming that a drink a day during pregnancy was perfectly safe, she was confronted by Susan Astley Ph.D, a professor of epidemiology and pediatrics and... director of the Washington State Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diagnostic & Prevention network of clinics. Astley walked Oster through the data and explained her numerous errors. Now, the trustworthy thing to do would be to acknowledge the mistake and try to pull the book from publication until the text could be revised.
Oster did no such thing, only to double down on frequent interviews and podcasts, and go on to make numerous serious errors regarding the COVID-19 pandemic that certainly contributed to much preventable death and disability. Yet her and her ilk see fit to hold everyone else to some ridiculous standard, while never admitting to their own errors. This is because “restoring trust in public health” is a rhetorical feint.
Don’t Feed the Vultures
No amount of scientific arguments made in good faith or supported by mountains of hard evidence is ever going to placate the howling jackals of reactionary mythology, much less force them to admit their frequent errors. Why give up such a lucrative grift spouting nonsense, whether it’s on Twitter or the pages of America’s leading newspapers? What is really meant by “restoring trust in public health” is by simply abandoning all scientific rigor and blindly adopting an absurd platform of demands, regardless of who suffers as a result. These saboteurs demand blind trust in their proclamations, while casting doubt and suspicion upon everyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
To supposedly “restore trust,” this means turning a blind eye to patients dying of viruses transmitted in the hospital. It means shrugging when schools are drowning in outbreaks of preventable illness. It means not investing in the development of new vaccines that would save lives. It means writing off preventable deaths as those who simply failed to become “metabolically healthy.” Instead, you are supposed to trust a “Nutrition Chatbot” which will generate potentially dangerous guides for inserting various “real foods” up your rectum.
Any credible doctor or scientist will tell you that they don’t expect blind trust from the public. A healthy dose of skepticism and an open mind are for more valuable, especially when navigating a national crisis. On the other hand, those who insist these doctors and scientists need to “restore trust in public health” insist on dedicated faith in their proclamations, while turning a blind eye to their many errors.
When you see this sort of rhetoric in opinion-editorial columns, Senate hearings, or otherwise, you can rest assured that this is not an argument worth taking seriously. They’re demanding that others be held to a standard they refuse to hold themselves to, and this is not the behavior of a trustworthy person. Blaming doctors and scientists for the intentional sabotage by an outspoken few is utterly absurd.
It’s long past time for the general public to stand up and start pushing back.
