I think the problem is that too many people do not know or care or respect how institutional knowledge works. And how to build it, and why so many of the things we take for granted is the result of subject matter experts iterating on real world problems for decades.

No one is defending the NIH or Fauci or the math department at UCLA in a way that makes sense to a majority of Americans... Why these are even under attack in the first place is beyond me.