Yes, this does capture something of the experience of the Covid pandemic.
Early, there was genuine uncertainty, questions to which no one really knew the answer.
e.g. How infectious? How deadly? Is it transmissible via surfaces? The answers to some of these questions became apparent fairly quickly,
I can remember listening to virology experts talking about the idea that viruses tend to evolve to be more infectious but less deadly. Expert opinion at the time: would be nice, but not necessarily true for all viruses. As it happened, we got lucky and it did evolve to be more infectious and less deadly.
Then, we get to the point where you start to doubt what the government is saying,
Do masks work? Initially, the story is they weren’t effective. Then masks were compulsory. Was that change motivated by knew knowledge? Unclear. My best guess is that the original version was right, and masks are ineffective. But I have low confidence in this.
Was it a lab leak? Was the government being honest here? Etc.
Yes, this does capture something of the experience of the Covid pandemic.
Early, there was genuine uncertainty, questions to which no one really knew the answer.
e.g. How infectious? How deadly? Is it transmissible via surfaces? The answers to some of these questions became apparent fairly quickly,
I can remember listening to virology experts talking about the idea that viruses tend to evolve to be more infectious but less deadly. Expert opinion at the time: would be nice, but not necessarily true for all viruses. As it happened, we got lucky and it did evolve to be more infectious and less deadly.
Then, we get to the point where you start to doubt what the government is saying,
Do masks work? Initially, the story is they weren’t effective. Then masks were compulsory. Was that change motivated by knew knowledge? Unclear. My best guess is that the original version was right, and masks are ineffective. But I have low confidence in this.
Was it a lab leak? Was the government being honest here? Etc.
So I can see why it undermined public trust.