If you think the backlash is bad now, wait until the mass antibody testing starts and it shows more people were exposed and asymptomatic or mild than thought. Doesn’t matter the ratio. The anger will be real.

Real science has uncertainties taken into account, acknowledges gaps in what is known. I submit that what we’re living through isn’t policy through science, but policy dictated by a scientist class that doesn’t want to be questioned

COVID19 threw a lot of us for a loop. Models changed as information changed. That’s normal, that’s science. It was also never acknowledged that way because to do so would be to cede ground in a PR and political war that science shouldn’t be a part of

So now we have, just as in any other realm of politicized scientific endeavor, “settled” science that cannot be questioned, even though the facts and data are changing every day and with every new testing paradigm

The science community, to its detriment, chose as always to circle the wagons against the unwashed heathens and let the changing conclusions play out within their own internal world. That might work with climate change and other topics, but not with a global pandemic

For those that have long advocated that our governmental policies be dictated by science and facts, this crisis in many ways was the big test. Not just in outcome, but in gaining trust. And in many ways, it’s failed.

One needs only to look at the changing metric. First it was flatten the curve and slow the spread. Now, even a single new infection means public policy failed. No other disease has ever been treated this way.

Ohio was a leader in shutting down. DeWine and Dr Acton were praised for their proactive actions that ostensibly were driven by science. We are due to start reopening on May 1, yet many of the same voices that praised their earlier actions are sour on the prospect

Even though ostensibly these same science driven actors are making the call, a lot of people think it’s still too early. No facts or data or models drive their view, just an extension of the mindset put in place when this all began, a position staked out not to be abandoned

Because what happened was this - people and politicians draped themselves in science when it suited their views and accommodated their anxieties. Any science driven view would want continuously more data and updated models and fresh recommendations for a fluid situation

But instead, as always, science became a binary position. “Science” says to lockdown forever and it’s “anti-science” to question that. That dichotomy does no one any good and is at odds with what science claims to represent. And the science community largely went along with it

Ultimately that’s why I think science failed this test of public trust - over the years they’ve become tethered to one political side but when the process really mattered, failed to communicate nuance or uncertainty or doubt because those things aren’t politically expedient

So when data comes in in the form of antibody testing that shows more people had this than were admitted or accounted for in political calculations, a very large segment of the public will be angry.

The valid rationalizations for why the new data shows that will not matter. The toxic confluence of politics and partisan media reporting that science shackled itself to will have undermined trust in it with a finality many do not understand