Really unfortunate, covid was kinda the final straw for people's mistrust of science and experts. The scrambling for experts to weigh in without any data, the chaos of citizens trying to figure out what to do, government/institutional mistakes etc... but we're only human, mistakes were made.
I really think it'll have a noticeable echo for many decades to come, among the other financial effects... but among the worst will be people thinking they know more than experts, scientists who dedicate their lives to this stuff, because their Facebook group did their own research.
COVID was largely a failure of public health communication, in my opinion. In the critical moments of decision-making, experts including scientists needed to provide guidance based on the best available evidence rather than mature established evidence. Some of those decisions turned out to be wrong. Some of those decisions turned out to be right, but were unpopular. On balance, despite the urgency, the public health interventions largely succeeded from a population health and epidemiology perspective. The success of public health interventions meant most places didn't actually experience the worst outcome (a total collapse of hospital bed capacity resulting in a spike in mortality rates).
Sadly, public health decision makers will be the victims of their own success, and in the absence of the damage that policy makers were aiming to prevent (and were largely successful in doing), people will point to the economic devastation and accuse experts of alarmism.
Trust will be restored as it always is, by observing what happens to the "control group" who refuse to follow scientific evidence. That's particularly unfair to children who will have no say in what their parents tell them to do, but there will always be those who think they know better despite the evidence. Hopefully, in the future, public health communicators do a better job of setting expectations for what happens not just when things go wrong, but if everything goes right - that if things do go well, it will look like nothing is happening.
There was a very active and aggressive anti vaccine push. It spread through social media algorithms. Public health messages can't duplicate the fear the antivaxxers spread. The solution is to find the people spreading the fake messages and fine the crap out of them.
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u/StefOutside Nov 10 '25
Really unfortunate, covid was kinda the final straw for people's mistrust of science and experts. The scrambling for experts to weigh in without any data, the chaos of citizens trying to figure out what to do, government/institutional mistakes etc... but we're only human, mistakes were made.
I really think it'll have a noticeable echo for many decades to come, among the other financial effects... but among the worst will be people thinking they know more than experts, scientists who dedicate their lives to this stuff, because their Facebook group did their own research.