We can't let the sheep make up their own minds, we have to make up their minds for them; for they are only sheep of course, and we are the pigs.
I mean, what would happen in one of those stupid sheep had a thought to themselves? They might think
Hey isn't that a coronavirus reasearch lab right down the street? Maybe
they know something about this new coronavirus?
....
Human beings are built to defer to *legitamite* authority, its a principle of how we organize ourselves. Doesn't matter if its mathematics or goverment. But that legitamacy must be demonstrated. If a mathematician fails to answer basic mathematical questions, then his authority on the subject comes into question. When the authorities fail to answer basic questions (like where did this virus come from? Why aren't we investigating the wuhan lab? Why was Fauci funding it? Why was the man in charge of the WHO investigation the man who was in charge of funding it?), they are failing to demonstrate *legitamite* authority. In a functioning democracy, that failure would be met with replacement.
In a field like mathematics it's obvious that we don't have the necessary tools to evaluate expert evidence, but the same is true in most complex fields, of which epidemiology is certainly one. The experts of course won't always be right, and their best guesses will evolve as more evidence is gathered, as they should. But asking people without specific domain knowledge, even intelligent generalists, to independently weight expert evidence without resorting to trust of experts is likely to result in less informed decision making, not more.