"What I think is most problematic is that we [in the medical field] were a bit dishonest in saying we had more confidence than we really did," says Vinay Prasad, a practicing hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. "The place that I have been most critical of the pandemic response is communication around the certainty of the evidence when it is, in fact, a lot more uncertain."
Prasad, an outspoken and persistent critic of what he views as an incompetent, censorious, and overly invasive response by the American public health establishment to the COVID-19 pandemic, is also the host of the podcast Plenary Session, which covers medicine and health policy. He spoke to Reason about the major hit in public trust that public health agencies, the medical profession, and science in general have taken during the pandemic by insisting that Americans blindly "trust the science."
