Trust the experts — but which ones?

When it comes to SARS-2 Coronavirus, we're being told to "trust the experts." But which experts?

Are Yale, Oxford, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon just some Podunk JUCOs? No, they're some of the most renowned universities on this planet, and their models/analysis paint a different tale than the supposedly infallible Dr. Anthony Fauci's current doomsaying — which is now his fourth different opinion on SARS-2 Coronavirus just since January.

Dr. David Katz of Yale, writing in the noted right-wing/science-denying New York Times, is concerned our cure (consisting of mass shutdowns) is worse than the disease.

Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford penned a peer-reviewed study on the "harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures" to fight SARS-2 Coronavirus.

Sunetra Gupta is a professor of theoretical epidemiology at venerable Oxford, and she directly contradicted the now "revised" (see that as gas-lighted) apocalyptic Imperial College simulation that spooked our own government into starting the shutdowns.

Wesley Pegden is an associate professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon, one of the leading research universities in the country, and he says the data simulations demanding indefinite mass shutdowns/social-distancing have a poison pill: "The duration of containment does not matter. As long as a large majority of the population remains uninfected, lifting containment measures will lead to an epidemic almost as large as would happen without having mitigations in place."

Translation: this behavior modification isn't a magic bullet, and at some point we have to assume the risk of mortality as previous generations did, while fighting the far more vicious polio virus that killed/paralyzed hundreds of thousands of Americans (including scores of children) for decades. Yet those generations still managed to industrialize America, and win two world wars before Jonas Salk injected his own children with the polio vaccine – after almost 20 years of failed human trials.

So again I ask – trust the experts, but which ones?

I wouldn't presume to debate Dr. Fauci on a topic he knows much more about than me. But what about experts at schools 99.99% of this world couldn't get into? Are they permitted to tug on Superman's cape?

"Trust the experts" they said. Except would those be the experts at the World Health Organization, who while doing China's propaganda bidding told us back in January "nothing to see here." By the way, I still can't believe they have so little self-awareness they still haven't deleted that tweet.

"Trust the experts" they said. But here's Dr. Fauci saying "the answer is no" on the drug chloroquine, which the president said might have some hope for SARS-2 Coronavirus. Except Dr. Stephen Smith of the Center for Infectious Diseases just went on national television and called it a "game-changer." Smith is a Duke and Yale grad, with post-doctoral training at the University of Virginia and the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Is he qualified to differ with Dr. Fauci?

"Trust the experts," they said. Would that be the CDC, which still can't seem to make up its mind about whether we should wear masks or not in public?

Why aren't these counter-experts' opinion as valid? Why are we not seeing these differing opinions vet each other? How come they're never asked about at White House press briefings with Dr. Fauci, who is obviously the biggest influence on American policy at the moment? Is Dr. Fauci even considering these counter-experts, before recommending that President Trump pursue a draconian public policy that has already led to a higher unemployment rate than the second year of the Great Depression?

Wouldn't you like to know the answers to these questions? Don't you think we deserve to know them? Because it will be people like us, not the bureaucrats, who will be left to pick up the pieces of what's left of our economy and way of life when this is over.

Experts have expertise you and I don't have, but they're not necessarily wiser, nor are they any less sinful. Experts are also wrong all the time, because they're human, too.

Experts told Admiral Nimitz he was dumb to listen to one Japanese code-breaker, and risk much of our remaining Naval fleet on an ambush at Midway, which ended up turning the tide of the Pacific Theater in World War II. Experts told the Apostles there's no such thing as a Resurrection. Experts differed mightily with Copernicus and Galileo. I could go on and on.

Plenty of "experts" right now think there's 57 genders, and human life happened because two amino acids formed a single-celled protein 600 million years ago for no reason whatsoever. Plenty of "experts" also love them some of those open borders that allowed China to export its JV version of Captain Trips to our country.

Do not so easily hand your sovereignty over to the experts, especially without skeptical vetting. For sure, experts have done amazing things for humanity as well. But a critical time such as this requires more questions, not fewer.

Accountability never made any of us worse. But a lack of it sure does.

(Steve Deace is the host of "The Steve Deace Show" for Blaze TV.)