When a radiologist takes an x-ray that shows you have a fractured hip, are you going to trust him to do the surgery to repair that fracture? When a scientist invents a new cell phone battery that is longer lasting and non-incendiary, are you going to ask him for advice on vaccines? Do you and I have any expertise on vaccines?

There are several factors that aggravate the confusion and anger about this this pandemic:

1. China is doing its utmost to conceal the origins of the virus;

2. People with no relevant expertise are offering “expert” advice;

3. Opinion, rumour and outright fiction are given the same weight as scientific evidence.

4. Scientific evidence is misunderstood and misinterpreted, sometimes deliberately.

For instance, there is much concern because the vaccine appears to cause myocarditis in 1-5 people out of every 100,000 who are vaccinated. Not as much is being said about studies that show the disease itself causes myocarditis six times as often and that these cases are apt to be more severe and longer lasting.

Why don’t we just accept that our public health officials are more competent than we are to sort fact from fiction? They probably aren’t getting everything right, but they are doing the best they can with the information available to them and we will be better off if we take their advice rather than thinking we know more than they do.

By far the greatest number of deaths from COVID have been people who are elderly or who are immune compromised due to other conditions. The same is true for seasonal influenza. The majority of these deaths take place in nursing homes. What if our system of warehousing the elderly in large institutions is a greater problem than the virus?