Not Everyone's an Expert

At scary times like these, with the coronavirus “going viral” as the kids say, and the stock market in freefall, I think we might want to heed the advice of actual experts in areas like infectious disease and the economy, rather than freelancing ourselves and just doing whatever.

There are always going to be a few idiots (Mike Pence, Larry Kudlow) who pose as experts but don’t know what they’re talking about, but I think most people who have made epidemiology or economics their life’s work, such as rank and file scientists, should be heeded. So wash your hands and don’t hoard surgical masks. Leave your money where it is and ride out the market fluctuation if you’re in a position where you can.

There’s an old joke: “What do you call the person who graduates last in his class at medical school?”

“A doctor.”

I know it’s a tongue-in-cheek joke but the lowest graduate of medical school probably still knows more about medicine than you or I. Like, Ben Carson might be a dimwit in other areas but he’s probably still a better brain surgeon than I am. Besides, somebody has to graduate at the bottom. At, say, Harvard Medical School, the dumbest person in the class may have graduated with a B-plus average. Are any of us smarter than a B-plus Harvard student in that field?

Hell, I’ve been a medical editor and writer for almost 20 years. I’ve spent countless hours writing about peer-reviewed medical studies. And believe me, spending some time on PubMed certainly does not make lay people more knowledgeable than actual experts in that subject matter. Are you going to trust me, with my BA in English, to treat your lower extremity wound? What I’m saying is, if you want to scoff at actual experts, you should have more ammunition than that degree from Google University.

When people roll their eyes and go “PFFT!” at reasonable consensus statements by experts, that’s when we get healthy people hoarding surgical masks, despite warnings by the CDC and WHO, leaving fewer masks for healthcare professionals. That’s when we get the president, a man who has looked directly at a solar eclipse, calling the coronavirus “fake news” and talking out of his ass about it. That’s when you get chaos that makes the existing chaos a little worse.