Agreed, it can be very difficult for anyone to make useful decisions outside of just trusting the existing consensus.
I mean there is no real way for me to know if a vaccine is safe. I assume it is, and prefer to gamble on it not harming me and potentially helping the current situation.
But there is really no way for me to know for sure.
To put it another way, when the Omicron variant emerged, there were newspaper articles that often showed pictures of the spike protein labelled with different mutations.
As it happens, I did research in protein structural bioinformatics, so I have a good idea what the detail in these images 'mean' in a certain sense. However they are of zero use in making a single meaningful decision about how to alter my behaviour (or not!).
Of course, the journalists add these images as decoration, but to me it symbolises the mass of irrelevant detail provided. Which is not the same as saying 'just believe science!' as that is also wrong and unhelpful.
I mean there is no real way for me to know if a vaccine is safe. I assume it is, and prefer to gamble on it not harming me and potentially helping the current situation.
But there is really no way for me to know for sure.
To put it another way, when the Omicron variant emerged, there were newspaper articles that often showed pictures of the spike protein labelled with different mutations.
As it happens, I did research in protein structural bioinformatics, so I have a good idea what the detail in these images 'mean' in a certain sense. However they are of zero use in making a single meaningful decision about how to alter my behaviour (or not!).
Of course, the journalists add these images as decoration, but to me it symbolises the mass of irrelevant detail provided. Which is not the same as saying 'just believe science!' as that is also wrong and unhelpful.
I'm not sure what the answer is, really.