Look, I think we can all agree that diagnostic categories are useful constructs that are often divorced from biological realities.

The general public grossly underestimates how many sick people are undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, partially diagnosed, or given concurrent conflicting diagnoses.

Which means, the general public grossly underestimates how many people are walking around in disabled bodies with no language for clearly articulating why their bodies are behaving this way.

Which puts us in a difficult rhetorical position.

Because the general public has constructed a story about healthcare that either you are a responsible informed person who thinks medicine is a public good, or you are irrational.

But the truth is that medicine is not rational.

It is shaped by human bias. It has given some of us a lot and it has hurt some of us irreparably (often both).

Diagnosis can be stigmatized and weaponized and withheld. Even with fabled definitive test results.

This thread is meandering, which is why replies are off, but I think Pandemic Discourse has really entrenched a lot of people even more into their perspective that medical science is Good and medical criticism is Bad. (Or vice versa.)