The "erosion of trust" which you think is a natural reaction is, in fact, a constructed one created by rhetoric which holds science up to unreasonable standards of reliability and then complains about how it can't get everything right.
Its absolutely true that public health authorities didn't get everything right during the pandemic. Its also absolutely true that studies have less epistemological power than people often make them out to have (which is what the replication crisis is really about). But it is a rhetorical angle that the appropriate response to either of those states of affairs is a rejection of science or trust in authority. People should understand the limits of science and put an appropriate amount of credence in it, but the idea that scientific authority should be outright rejected is a cultural movement with very little attachment to reality and one which is astroturfed and exploited, primarily by the political right, to whip up their base.
More broadly speaking, I think its wrong to blame the institutions themselves when elements of the american political system have been working tirelessly to discredit institutions and science for decades. It isn't a spontaneous, natural thing.
The "erosion of trust" which you think is a natural reaction is, in fact, a constructed one created by rhetoric which holds science up to unreasonable standards of reliability and then complains about how it can't get everything right.
Its absolutely true that public health authorities didn't get everything right during the pandemic. Its also absolutely true that studies have less epistemological power than people often make them out to have (which is what the replication crisis is really about). But it is a rhetorical angle that the appropriate response to either of those states of affairs is a rejection of science or trust in authority. People should understand the limits of science and put an appropriate amount of credence in it, but the idea that scientific authority should be outright rejected is a cultural movement with very little attachment to reality and one which is astroturfed and exploited, primarily by the political right, to whip up their base.
More broadly speaking, I think its wrong to blame the institutions themselves when elements of the american political system have been working tirelessly to discredit institutions and science for decades. It isn't a spontaneous, natural thing.