A HALF CENTURY OF CREDIBILITY GAPS.

The term "credibility gap" dates to my early adolescence, when it referred to the divergence of Expert Opinion on how well things were going in Vietnam to what any serviceman on the ground could tell his neighbors once, if, he got home.  "[Reporter David] Halberstam, who had covered the war since September 1962 (he left Vietnam in December 1963), did not dare to state flatly that the Viet Cong were winning."  Things were going badly long before the "body count" reports or the Tet offensive.

Therefore, perhaps it is not surprising that people are having none of the "trust the science" stuff being pushed by Our Intellectual Betters.  In the middle of a lament about anti-intellectual behavior by the masses, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer Mark Johnson inadvertently stumbles into yet another credibility gap.

In the U.S., though, researchers and health leaders confronted the pandemic at a time when many Americans displayed open mistrust of government and science.

Trust in both began declining long before COVID-19. Political polarization has shrouded the public response to almost every action taken by government. As for science, just as millions of Americans deny the evidence behind climate change, many are wary of vaccines. Health leaders have cautioned that the COVID-19 vaccine will only be as effective as the number of people choosing to receive it.

"Like the trust you have in a family member or a friend, it takes a while to build that back once it has been broken," [Nuclear Threat Initiative senior program officer Jessica] Bell said.

As if a flack at a peacenik organization has anything other than an informed layman perspective to offer on government agencies creating credibility gaps.  Perhaps Mr Johnson's jape about "deny the evidence behind climate change" tells you everything you need to know about his agenda.  At the time of the original Earth Day, the projection was that there might be mass starvation or no humans at all by 2020; later the projection was that the snows would melt on Kilimanjaro or no longer fall on New York City (guess what, it's still there.)  But people like Mr Johnson would still rather hector us.  National Review's Ellen Carmichael is having none of it.

Prominent progressives, left-wing activists, and their media allies have routinely contended that if only Americans weren’t so stupid, selfish, and negligent — and in particular, if red-staters could abandon their silly notions of constitutional rights and their incessant desire to keep local businesses open — this pandemic would have been over a long time ago.

But, for all the insistence that it is American obstinance that is perpetuating the pandemic, there’s not much evidence for such accusations. We are actually now masking at higher rates than ever before, which has been confirmed by observational studies showing broad compliance in retail establishments by customers and staff. Meanwhile, the TSA reports that since March 15, 2020, the rate of passengers passing through checkpoints is about 25 percent of 2019 totals. Americans have significantly curtailed socializing with others, despite scientists telling the New York Times that the data do not support claims that small gatherings catalyze coronavirus surges. And even as the very real pains of prolonged isolation and widespread depression caused by COVID-19 persist, the vast majority of American families have still greatly altered their holiday traditions by canceling plans, limiting gathering size, enforcing social distancing, and even requiring face coverings. The repeated insinuation that pigheaded Americans have refused to do what it takes to defeat the virus is tone-deaf, cruel, and simply untrue. In reality, we have sacrificed a lot more for a lot longer than anyone thought we could.

Put another way, the public have put more trust in people who really don't have much credibility than they ought.  Perhaps Heather MacDonald is being an optimist.

By now, the collapse of government legitimacy is complete. For three months, public officials abdicated their responsibility to balance the costs and benefits of any given policy. They put the future of hundreds of millions of Americans in the hands of a narrow set of experts who lack all awareness of the workings of economic and social systems, and whose “science” was built on the ever-shifting sand of speculative models and on extreme risk aversion regarding only one kind of risk.

The public officials who ceded their authority to the so-called experts were deaf to the pleas of law-abiding business owners who saw their life’s efforts snuffed out. They engineered the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth, through thoroughly arbitrary decision making. And then they stood by as billions more dollars of work burned down. Public order and safety, equal treatment under the law, stability of expectations—all the prerequisites for robust investment have been decimated. The failure to quell the riots means that more are inevitable. Any future business faces possible destruction by another lockdown or by looting—which it will be is anyone’s guess.

Or perhaps it is time for a new generation of David Halberstams to rediscover the credibility gaps.