Yeserbius > Most of you have a primary care doctor. One that you’re had since before COVID that you go to when you’re sick.
You are right. To my best knowledge, none of the anti-vaxers (or any other anti-anything) here quoted their doctors. Still, asking a doctor in an emerging situation has limits (I presume you have a garden-variety primary doctor, not on university faculty):
1) As R Meir Twersky wrote – we value life more than the general culture, or in a case of great uncertainty: ask several doctors and take the safest approach. It is called “robust estimation”, I am pretty impressed by R Twersky’s approach here.
2) Doctor will give you a conservative answer and will follow general policy that may be behind times at current speed. I asked about a particular covid action my, pretty experienced in other aspects, doctor – he said that there is no recommendation “yet” for my situation. So, I acted on my own, and he called me two months later saying that the recommendation arrived (to do what I did). In another case, he said “we only do it for research subject, I can’t order it within the system, there is no button” (that is, yes, it is important but the system does not let me do it).
This is practical – as in latest Omicron craze, maybe people who got infected en masse lately – would not if they would take action earlier. In my area, suddenly everyone is in serious masks in some stores – 2 weeks after they should have.