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I went to the doctor's yesterday. This was embarrassing for them on several fronts.
First, I had to come in to do an appointment which could be done over telemedicine, but apparently there are regulations against this.
Second, while they did temp checks and required masks (yay!), none of the nurses or doctors actually wore anything stronger than a surgical mask. I'm coming in here with a KN95 + goggles + face shield because why not take cheap precautions to reduce the risk, and my own doctor is just wearing a surgical? I bought 20 KN95s for, like, 15 bucks on Amazon.
Third, and worst of all, my own doctor spouted absolute nonsense. The mildest insinuation was that surgical facemasks only prevent transmission, but I seem to recall that many kinds of surgical masks halve your chances of infection as well.
Then, as I understood it, he first claimed that coronavirus and the flu have comparable case fatality rates. I wasn't sure if I'd heard him correctly - this was an expert talking about his area of expertise, so I felt like I had surely misunderstood him. I was taken aback. But, looking back, that's what he meant.
He went on to suggest that we can't expect COVID immunity to last (wrong) but also that we need to hit 70% herd immunity (wrong). How could you even believe both of these things at the same time? Under those beliefs, are we all just going to get sick forever? Maybe he didn't notice the contradiction because he made the claims a few minutes apart.
Next, he implied that it's not a huge deal that people have died because a lot of them had comorbidities. Except that's not how comorbidities and counterfactual impact works. "No one's making it out of here alive", he says. An amusing rationalization.
He also claimed that nursing homes have an average stay length of 5 months. Wrong. AARP says it's 1.5 years for men, 2.5 years for women, but I've seen other estimate elsewhere, all much higher than 5 months. Not sure what the point of this was - old people are 10 minutes from dying anyways? What?
Now, perhaps I misunderstood or misheard one or two points. But I'm pretty sure I didn't mishear all of them. Isn't it great that I can correct my doctor's epidemiological claims after reading Zvi's posts and half of an epidemiology textbook? I'm glad I can trust my doctor and his epistemology.
What do you call the person who graduates last in their med school class? Doctor.
In the US that isn't the case. There are limited places for internships and the worst person in medical school might not get a place for an internship and thus is not allowed to be a doctor. The medical system is heavily gated to keep out people.