OK so to counter,

Do you think 'scientific research' is in a great position from a funding perspective right now?

Have you looked at the press or out the window as to how "science" is portrayed due to covid? The lack of sanity in both political directions is alarming and depressing all at the same. Both sides of the public on this are both, equally, damagingly, wrong. However, they pick up and throw around scientific papers as though it gives them the right to be the next pope...

If science is paraded around like nonsense in the press there's a matter of time until we end up with politicians who make the decisions sit there and say "I don't see any public benefit in researching this".

That day will only come sooner if things carry on as we head into a recession.

Edit: My proposal to fix, as I've suggested elsewhere, keep scientific papers behind some (non-for-profit) walled access, obviously that has damaging impacts when you say X from country Y can't read paper on Z, but frankly maybe the public isn't grown up enough for completely open discourse when they can't understand the material.

No, but science won't have the opportunity to work when people are passing up vaccines for invermectin.

Science is a tool for falsifying hypotheses, not dictating policies or individual choices.

And wearing a mask in the same confined space with no air circulation for about 20min is pointless but still enforced by idiotic govt policies...

Unfortunately "bad science" cuts both ways when it comes to miscommunication.