It’s ok Covidians - being wrong is part of science

Tucker just interviewed the guy who wrote this opinion article - and he’s wise beyond his years. He’s willing to learn from being wrong. God bless him, because this is some spot on words of wisdom. He’s the kind of doc we need more of. Medicine (like law) is a practice. Mistakes make us better.

Hats off to this guy - Kevin Bass, MD - still in school. Relevant quotations below, but do yourselves a favor - and read the whole thing.

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I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.

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We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data.

And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil. We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.

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Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve.

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When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.

Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.

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Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as "grifters" those who represented their interests. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view.

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Thank you good Dr. Bass. I could hug you. This is the kind of thing we need to see more of in our public discourse, and in the practice of medicine in general. Dr. Bass will make a good doctor, or public health guy. He’s halfway there now. You treat individuals, not diseases.

FWIW former Covid Bro Bass, I accept your apology. I hope we can move forward as a country. And the only way to do so is to forgive.

Enjoy Baws. There’s hope for us yet.

Newsweek Article