COVID crisis equalized White and Black distrust of medical profession

[DrBanneker]

Interesting survey here on Pew:
Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines

Before the pandemic, the Black community had the lowest trust of medical scientists and Whites trust was much higher. Now both Whites and Hispanics trust of the medical establishment has crashed and basically equalized at the Black level. Black trust in medical science had been going up constantly until COVID when it crashed to its previous level.

It's crazy that despite a rapid vaccine success the medical community may come out with a major "L" due to people's perception and anger and certain restrictions

 

[phcitywarrior]

Not surprising at all with all the politics surrounding the vaccine, mandates and the conflicting information concerning the vaccine. I'd say it's warranted.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Not surprising at all with all the politics surrounding the vaccine, mandates and the conflicting information concerning the vaccine. I'd say it's warranted.

You could argue ways in which medical profession distrust was sometimes warranted before, though sadly it's still usually channeled in ways (avoiding medical care when it's actually important) that are more self-destructive than enlightening.


In terms of the vaccines it would be ridiculous to suggest it's somehow more warranted, overall the entire vaccine development and rollout has been one of the most transparent medical interventions in memory. Constant papers all made public immediately, constant research, publication of new finds immediately every time, very fast sharing of best practices across the globe. Any informed member of the public has had fairly easy access to all the same information the medical profession had.

The issue has been threefold.

1. Enormous politization thus meaning that certain propagandists had motive to distribute misinformation which clouded everything

2. The pace was absolutely ridiculous - in just two years we've taken a disease that didn't even exist anymore and worked to understand a gargantuan amount about its transmission, symptoms, treatments, vaccines. We've never learned this much this fast about one disease. But the average layman can't keep up - they don't understand that when you're investigating something so fukking new, you learn more information every single week. They get stuck on something they heard 15 months ago and then if you tell them you know more now they think it's somehow a contradiction.

3. The general public is scientifically ignorant so they don't understand the scientific method of constantly coming to conclusions via experimental data and then constantly re-evaluating and refining those conclusions through more experimental data. Newton's theory is "wrong" because they're completely unaware of Einstein's relativity, Einstein's theory is "wrong" because it doesn't take into account quantum, we're always learning more and expanding knowledge. That doesn't mean Newton or Einstein were untrustworthy, it just means that every new contribution adds more to the picture but the picture takes time to be complete.