We've had, in the past year, at various times, public policies that have prevented grocery stores from selling "non-essential" items such as towels and blankets (while allowing alcohol), halted critical health services such as cancer treatments, and led to people from the same household being verbally and physically assaulted for not distancing or wearing masks - after a period of time in which people were verbally chastised for wearing masks when the official stance was not to.

We've sorted a lot of this out over the past year, but there is an all time distrust of institutions surrounding both policymakers and the public health recommendations informing them, and there's a reason for it.

We can either help assuage people's fears (whether you see them as founded or unfounded) by empathizing with their concerns and experiences and addressing them while ensuring that any measures enacted remain rooted in science that we can trust...

OR we can be part of the problem for why there's so much distrust, by ignoring anyone who may have real experiences that have caused them to lose trust in our science and health institutions, and telling them that it's all in their head.

I strongly hope for the former, myself.