once upon a time, there was a pleasing notion:

"if the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed"

alas if that ship was ever seaworthy, it has long since sailed. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/scott-atlas-white-house-coronavirus-adviser-critics-ignore-science/

today "if the truth being told upsets me, i will gaslight you into the stone age"

the relentless attacks on atlas for his high crimes of "being right" and "speaking truth to epidemiology" have been surreally vicious

i suspect this is what's upsetting the epidemiological covens.

unlike these experts in bureaucracy & hysterical pronouncement to elicit budget increases, atlas is an expert in cost benefit analysis

if you have just done $5 trillion in damage to accomplish basically nothing the last thing you want is to hear about the cost side of the ledger

if you have just imposed policies so ill conceived that they will cost more lives in collateral damage than they could ever possibly save even if they worked as advertised (and they don't), the last thing you want is to talk about the cost side of the ledger.

if you have just put 10's of millions of kids out of school and hamstrung their learning, possibly leaving many permanently behind, to save them from a virus less dangerous to them than annual flu, the last thing you want is to talk about the cost side of the ledger.

but talk about it we must if we plan to ever describe ourselves as "sane adults" again

sane people know that actions have costs and benefits and life is about trade offs

most epidemiologists seem to reject this premise outright

this is why they cannot be trusted with our lives