> Similarly, some people made a point to violate or otherwise shit on every single covid precaution not because of some firm scientific beliefs but just to piss people off and potentially score some PR points.
There's plenty of grifting on every side these days. Let's just ignore that.
But the core of the issue is a question about whether scientists have the right to settle political disputes about what we should do.
We argue that they do not. Science tries to tell us what is, but political will decides what ought to be done.
We argued that the government has no moral right to confine us to our homes, regardless of the circumstances. - this was a decision for individuals.
In our society, we treat scientists (or people who pose as scientists) as truth tellers ("trust the science") - an all-knowing priestly caste. However, this never was a scientific question. There's no science experiment that says the police should have harrassed people for sunbathing in the park. It was a political decision. We're not ruled by scientists - as we have seen, for very good reason.
Now of course, there are widespread problems in science: the reproducibility crisis, financial corruption, social bias, overselling speculative findings, overselling speculative models, mid-wit interpretations etc. - and for these reasons, a person who adopts a "non-scientific" frame often has superior predictive and interpretive powers to someone who "trusts the science". This is why the "conspiracy theorists" keep getting proven right over and over.
The lab leak theory was always extremely credible, but it was dismissed because it was a way to own the "basket of deplorables", and because it called into question the competance of the medical establishment.