What the Epidemic Did to Public Trust in Health Care Providers

I said early and often throughout the epidemic that all the futile and damaging measures being mandated by public health “experts” and idiotic politicians like our Governor the Incompetent Blowhard would lead to a massive decline in trust in medical and public health officials.  The research is confirming that.  This survey of over 440,000 people over age 18 found that trust in the advice of hospitals and physicians went from 72% in April 2020, the start of the epidemic, to 41% by April 2024.  Females, rural residents, African-Americans, poor people and those with lower educational levels showed the greatest decline of and levels of trust, probably because they were hurt most by the foolish policies.  If you constantly terrorize and lie to people and make statements that you know won’t be true–like wear masks and spread will stop, don’t go to work and spread will stop, keep your kids home from school and spread will stop, take this vaccines and the epidemic will be over, its safe to put CV-19 patients in nursing homes–you should expect and certainly deserve to lose any trust.  (JAMA Article)

This is a big problem.  It is important that the public trust what they hear from public health officials and from their own physicians and other providers.  Necessary childhood vaccinations are down because of the decline in trust.  This means death for some children and serious disease for others.  The way to keep trust, and to rebuild it now, is for a massively publicized and very sincere apology that acknowledges that lies were told and misinformation spread; coupled with a commitment to not making recommendations, much less mandating actions, unless there is clear definitive evidence supporting the recommendations and that evidence is made completely available to the public along with any information which suggests it might be incorrect.  Transparency and modesty are key.  You aren’t really experts, you just think you are so have a little humility about the state of your knowledge.  Talking about you Anthony Fauci, Vivek Murthy, Joe Biden, Tim Walz, Gretchen Witmar and all the rest of you wannabe dictators.