the problem was not the science, it was the certainty.

Every few months, Anthony Fauci drifts back into the news cycle. Not with a bombshell—more like an apathetic shrug. An interview clip. Another quiet admission that something everyone treated as iron law was actually a guideline… or a guess… or a behavioral nudge. Masks. Distancing. Messaging. Five years later, it’s all “context” and “best judgment” from the experts. This week was no different.

Here’s the thing—I can’t speak for everyone, but I think most people would’ve been fine with that if it had been said at the time. “We don’t know yet” is an adult sentence. People can handle it. What they can’t handle is being told something is unquestionable science, only to find out later it was provisional all along.

What actually broke trust wasn’t that experts were wrong. It was the certainty. The lack of humility. The way questioning—even mild, good-faith questioning—was treated as something dangerous that needed to be managed. Science is supposed to argue with itself. Policy isn’t. Once you blur that line, disagreement stops being part of the process and starts being framed as a moral failure.

What makes it worse is how casually this is all acknowledged now. Almost relaxed. Of course the six-foot rule wasn’t backed by hard data. Of course messaging was shaped to ensure compliance. Maybe those were defensible calls in an emergency—but let’s call them what they were: judgment calls. And people deserved to know that in real time.

But by all means, keep playing dumb about why trust in public institutions is at an all-time low. It surely has nothing to do with humility—or the lack of it.