zlacker

>>themgt+(OP)
My impression working with a couple pubilic health agencies over the last half decade or so is that they are considered effectively "rogue" by the institutions they are accountable to, they operate as surveillance organizations with the same kind of secrecy culture as intelligence work, their management staff revolve in and out from international NGOs and univeristy admins, they treat privacy laws and policy with contempt, epidemiologists aren't doctors or biologists but "social scientists" with a particular critical bent, and they are very concerned about being held accountable for the policies they have influenced and executed because they know what they tried to do.

Mostly, they are good people wanting to do good work, but imo, public health agencies have become a para-intelligence services with explicitly political aims. There is a network of academics who see health and health information as a policy lever, and they have been out in force leveraging it through public health agencies during the pandemic.

I think they have discredited themselves over travel bans, vax passports, the objectively insane and poisonous rhetoric about the "hesitant," and arbitrary mandates with no accountability for those who enforced them. I don't think they can be trusted to be arbiters of science for people with a basic statistical reasoning skills and a belief in the existence of truth. The article articulates a more general and relevant sentiment, which is that the medical establishment has forfeited its public trust.

>>motoha+J51
> epidemiologists aren't doctors or biologists but "social scientists" with a particular critical bent

I have 12 years of postsecondary education in life science (medicine, health sciences, biochemistry and cancer/cell bio research at the graduate level) and this is completely, unequivocally false.