For today I wrote about why people don't trust our public health institutions

Frankly, it was a little insane to revisit the first 3 months of this pandemic and how utterly flat-footed the CDC and FDA were

https://polimath.substack.com/p/the-role-of-non-expert-specialist

That was when it started becoming clear that individuals who could read academic papers were giving better pandemic behavior guidance than the hierarchical institutions in whom we have placed our faith

The CDC and FDA are a very specific kind of beast.

They're ok when our lives don't depend on them, but they are in place specifically to save lives.

This is not a thing that "more funding" fixes.

These organizations have a process and it's more concerned with "we need people to act this way, what words do we say to get them to act this way" than the truth.

They're more concerned with being "not wrong" than communicating clear truths

Finally, people do not feel respected by their public health organizations and certainly not by their politicians

The examples are too numerous to mention, but most of them treat their audience like a bunch of kids who can't understand complexity rather than equals