Not sure about you, but I suspect they're thinking of professional politicians and the professionals politicians hire.
That's the kind of bias he was probably thinking of.
Exponential processes don't exist in nature, they always break into some other curve at some point.
Epidemics are (more) properly modelled by the Gompertz function[1], and the position of the "transition" between the exponential portion and non-exponential points it the important point.
That is exactly what the person you are replying to is saying ("they always break into some other curve at some point.").
An epi curve is created from observations and shows new infections per day.
The Gompertz function is a mathematical formula and can be used to estimate total infections up to a date.
However, if you take the epi curve and plot the aggregate number of infections you'll find a curve that the Gompertz function approximates quite well.
The entire point is that forecasting exponentials is easy but becomes badly wrong at some point and that point is difficult to forecast
You and I must be thinking of different professionals.
At any rate, here are two very very very simple models of this epidemic: a) cases will grow linearly, b) cases will grow exponentially.
Super simple. extremely different outcome. Now, one still has to make policy decisions.
I think the solution is not fewer professionals, but more and better professionals.