It isn't just about science it's also about humility. Being willing to admit what you don't know rather than attempting to use that formal education as a bludgeon to push people to do what is either politically convenient (We don't have enough masks so we are going to tell everybody they don't need them so we can reserve them for medical personnel who are the most highly exposed) is both inherently deceptive (leading to loss of credibility of those advanced degrees) and not really science. Upping the ante by bringing the police power of the state into the picture to enforce even the theory du jour (far less the political point du jour) undermines faith both in science and government itself.

I'm not antivax. I said early on that the most prudent course for most people (and certainly most people over 40 or at special risk) was to have their first exposure to COVID antigens through immunization, but having said that it would have been helpful for the science (and scientists who damn well knew it) to admit that after a community acquired COVID infection you were essentially as protected in a reinfection as immunized people. To know it and NOT say it diminished the credibility of the scientists and in some people's eyes science itself. When government used the police power of the state to enforce unreasonable mandates they lost credibility as well.

This is not an indictment of either political party so much as an indictment of BOTH political parties and the judicial system that let it happen. The situation now is one where every adult that lived through it pretty much knows that some people and many politicians either cried wolf or knowingly lied, and were subsequently found not only to be wrong but duplicitous as well.

Even ignorance is more forgivable by most people than duplicitousness. So yeah, "science" lost credibility and government lost credibility and the population of antivaxxers has been increased and the extremists on both the Left and the Right are the only ones "benefitting" while we have unnecessarily handicapped a generation of school kids.

Honestly, Hub, I don't think even you would have wanted "science" or the government to do what was done in retrospect, because this WAS the inevitable outcome of that. A little more truthfulness and a little more humility in admitting the uncertainty of the data on the part of the scientists, more education and less dogmatism, and a much less authoritarian approach by the government I believe would have given us a far better result. And I think you are honest enough to admit that to yourself even if you won't post it.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was absolutely awesome.