The Covid-19 moment has created a seemingly bottomless demand for public health experts. Epidemiologists have been on prime-time for a year, and all manner of public health experts have appeared on broadcast television. That the media has called on expertise to help explain the moment is a good thing. But this has also put in the spotlight many who have not previously been in the spotlight. And being an expert with a public platform comes with special responsibilities.
Take the parade of experts predicting numbers of people who will be infected with Covid. Throughout 2020 we saw experts suggesting that the final Covid death tallies would be 200,000, or 2 million. All of these experts had reason to suggest what they were suggesting. But all fundamentally knew that their estimates were based on a range of assumptions that would likely not stand the test of time. And the vast majority did not. These predictions served to spread fevered worry and seed mistrust in the scientific enterprise. After all, if we cannot predict the extent of the outbreak correctly, what else might we not know?
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