Yeah I don't know why people are acting like this is some new thing that is unique to Covid.

if the internet were at the level of access / use back in 2003 with SARS or later on with swine flu or MERS, you may have likely seen it more talked about. especially if SARS had gone on longer or killed more people than simply 8 months / ~800 deaths.

the pandemic basically had large scale graduations of lay people from google medicine university- which, the population definitely should be far more health literate, and the population definitely should be more empowered to knowing what is happening in their body, and medicine should not be the exclusive perpetuator of what i describe as an "institutional learned helplessness" to health,

...but, large swathes of the population simply lack the media literacy or written word literacy whether to grade level or functional literacy [it's ~1/6 americans who are functionally illiterate] to accurately parse and understand the data or literature in front of them in studies / papers that are accessible at a simple click of a button.

what happens from this is [beyond, the massive spread of misinformation or confusing health information] is a frequency bias in the population where literature that has existed for a while becomes "new" despite being traded among researchers or similar [whose career / function is knowing this information] for that "a while" time.

Even some health professionals are doing it.

the pandemic has brought a lot of "COVID influencers" in medicine who essentially fall into two groups;

• people minimizing COVID, who are saying COVID is not an issue. they use their degree / education as an appeal to authority. or, people fearmongering about vaccines as they see it as a profitable venture.

• they often however "beg the question" about vaccines or post literature "neutrally" knowing how it'll appear to layperson's, because many medical boards / licensing institutions consider health mis/disinformation to be sanctionable if you're overt about it.

one doctor i can think to this is nearby me by a few hours in a city called London [by Toronto] and of which is part of the CPSO [college of physicians and surgeons of ontario- the people who license us,] who is on joe rogan's podcast. he's been fearmongering lately about myocarditis and vaccination.

what he doesn't tell you is that yeah, troponin-I is increased post-vaccination [in other vaccinations in general, too,] and your myocarditis risk goes up post vaccination by a tiny bit- but it only does so in a minority of young men, it's temporary, and your risk of said issue while unvaccinated is like 20x worse in severity, incidence, and length of time- where there's people with issues months after the fact.

this is likely because COVID is a vasculogenic disorder, not a respiratory one. which, most of the population is wholly unaware of this, and often calls back to literature from 2020 wrt COVID. many people are stuck in 2020 or parts of 2021 with how they think about COVID.

• people exploding COVID out of proportion to the risk that does indeed totally exist but while providing far more fear to the population through catchy tweets and misleading numbers / statistics [particularly, wrt long COVID] alongside "crystal ball predictions" [where, some of them are true, and it doesn't take an MD to predict some of these things.] than useful health information on how people can help themselves.

• they provide very vague health advisories that public health does as well, but they're seen as out of the mainstream or "rebels" by a group of people who almost horseshoe theory to anti-vaxxers, to chronic hypochondria [as much as i hate that label] and channeling their anxiety into wondering why people are not as anxious as me.

which, me too, i do get frustrated when i see people not taking COVID seriously, but my frustration is based on what i have seen clinically or know from literature.

essentially repeatedly telling people "you're gonna die! you're gonna die!!!" or "you'll get COVID a decatillion times until you die and your dog dies and your kids die!" is not helpful or construction. but, because there's a blackhole of expertise online the internet- this stuff is all people have, and it's quite popular.

on the flip side however, i've come to realize / observe that the level of "demigoddery" that the lay population uplifts physicians into isn't really bound by reality or merit. i was very rosey glasses wearing with doing my PSW, doing my PN, doing my RN from those two bridges, into attempting to slog through med school.

i'm a trans woman, wanted to kill myself daily as a teenager and was not functional, graduated with like... 50s, transitioned at 18, i'm 24 now [25 in 7 days!] and essentially had to slog through 'lesser' jobs / education [i quote lesser, as PSWs and nurses are Very hard working, and this work appears to be become easier the more educated you are] to get to where i now am, through bridging programs, into now my 4.0 GPA and large scale support from my faculty and such who encouraged me into this.

being trans helped inform a lot of my knowledge into medicine, and the world in general, alongside sex work and some other occupational / identity intersections with how i am thinking about medicine or applying my critical thinking.

i've met some very stupid physicians. on average, most of them are... average. the intersection of wealth / privilege into medical school also means you're getting a selective sample of the population as well, not necessarily bound in critical thinking or intelligence or ability, basically.

and, this privilege / upbringing often produces some interesting complexes of egomania / arrogance as well. to this, many health professionals do not know things to the capacity the lay population thinks they do, mostly bound by physician media on TV or in movies. most doctors are not dr. house or grey's anatomy or whatever.

the issue that a lot of med school faculty has come into recently is the conversation with the entire pedogagy around rote memorization & regurgitation of facts- is this good for the profession?

and, no, it is not. the consequence of the entire profession being set up around this is that the first inclination when confronted with symptoms many in this profession don't understand and/or can't explain is to decide they must not actually exist. you see this with long COVID, as an example.

this inclination has a lot to do with the way students are selected and then taught in our schools.

so, post viral syndromes are "new" information to some groups of HCPs- who have not kept up with their reading or whatever- and "new" information to groups facilitating the "new" information as a capacity of some abstract or powerful discovery only They have uncovered, and are so kindly delivering to the unwashed masses.

also, cognitive dissonance as well. incorporating new findings into practice can be challenging. if your Life's Mission is to Help Patients [which, most doctors unfortunately do not attend med school to do that, as i've come to discover]- and you've discovered that something you have been doing is not helpful or has a greater potential to harm,

...you can either incorporate this new information into your worldview and change your clinical practice. or you can reject it.

well, a lot of the latter is happening, not the former. i essentially operate on a policy now where am listening to patients quite in depth before i cut them off or challenge them. if i hear something- anything, in general, unspecific to medicine- that i do not understand, i immediately look up all of the literature on the subject and spend a few hours reading.

sorry for the very [embarrassingly] long reply. i hope that explains things better.