https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/experts-failure-covid-19-pandemic/677816/
At the time, the medical guidance was clear that people should not gather in large groups or be in proximity, and certainly not while singing and shouting. If doctors believed that the risks of such gatherings could be mitigated with masks or by being outdoors, they should have already been pressing for the lifting of the strictest measures everywhere, with the same advice they gave protesters. But if they were still holding to the theories that underpinned the lockdowns—and especially the school closures—then their approval of the demonstrations meant they were consciously setting aside those concerns in the name of a political cause with which they agreed.
Either way, they were acting as advocates rather than scientists. In the words of the environmental journalist Peter M. Sandman, they “clearly damaged the credibility of public health as a scientific enterprise that struggles to be politically neutral.”