Leana Wen admits ‘follow the science’ slogan ‘fuels distrust’ in health community: We ‘must display humility'

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Leana Wen tells CNN U.S. has been ‘overcounting’ COVID deaths: ‘We just need the truth’

CNN medical analyst Leana Wen told CNN on Tuesday that the U.S. has been "overcounting" the deaths and hospitalizations of patients due to COVID-19 and stressed the importance of "transparent reporting" on the actual numbers.

Dr. Leana Wen, a physician, CNN medical analyst and Washington Post contributing columnist who once promoted pandemic lockdowns is now admitting that the slogan promoting medical compliance, "follow the science," actually "fuels distrust" toward the scientific and medical community.

Wen made the claim in a Washington Post column Tuesday, noting that though there is appropriate power to the "follow the science" mantra, solely relying on it to promote and ensure public health policies doesn’t work to foster trust and compliance among the public.

Wen has become a controversial figure in recent months as a medical official finally exploring skepticism to the sweeping COVID-19 protocols put in place in 2020. 

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CNN medical analyst Leana Wen admitted in a recent Washington Post column that the mantra "follow the science" helped fuel "distrust" among the public for COVID-19 mandates. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)

Recently, she turned heads by presenting research showing that some U.S. medical institutions have been "overcounting" the number of people who have died from COVID-19.

Now she is taking aim at the ubiquitous authoritative mantra many physicians, media members, and politicians used to get the public on board with coronavirus mandates.

Her column opened with that centerpiece of mandate rhetoric, and even noted how it was bandied around for political leverage.

She wrote, "’Follow the science.’ That has become a mantra in public health policy. Health officials and politicians — including President Biden — invoke it to justify their decisions. Social media partisans hurl it back and forth to bolster their arguments."

She began to undermine it, saying, "The slogan has power because of course science matters, and of course we should follow it. But solely relying on science to guide public health decisions misses the complexity of policy deliberations."

Wen then declared, "The tragic paradox is that it fuels distrust in the scientific community and undermines the credibility of health officials."

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Pedestrians wearing facemasks walk past a sign posting Covid-19 requirements in front of a store in Hollywood, California on November 2, 2021. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Bolstering her claim, the doctor provided stats showing just how low trust in the science has dropped in the wake of the pandemic. She wrote, "A Pew Research Center survey last year found that only 29 percent of adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interest of the public, down from 40 percent in November 2020."

Additionally, she cited an NBC News polls, saying it "similarly found that trust in the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention fell from 69 percent at the beginning of the pandemic to just 44 percent by early 2022."

Wen added, "I’m not here to blame that decline on ‘follow the science.’ My concern is different. I’m worried about the way that we lose people’s trust when we oversimplify the trade-offs and uncertainty of complicated public health policy."

The doctor recalled how she herself was disparaged as an authority on COVID-19 mandates, saying, "When I supported lockdowns in March 2020, I was called a fearmonger bent on taking away people’s livelihoods. When I promoted vaccines, anti-vaccine advocates accused me of ‘mass murder’ for pushing ‘experimental’ injections on people."

She also claimed that when she "wrote columns agreeing with Biden administration decisions to ease covid mitigation measures, more than 600 people signed a petition labeling me a racist and ableist who promoted eugenics." Essentially, she received backlash from different sides depending on the stance she took. 

This prompted her to admit, "Clearly, public health needs a reset. But what kind? The answer, I’m convinced, isn’t to diminish the role of science but to make clear the role of values alongside it."

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 01: Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, gives an update on the Omicron COVID-19 variant during the daily press briefing at the White House on December 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. The first case of the omicron variant in the United States has been confirmed today in California. ( (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images))

The doctor criticized the idea that spreaders of misinformation primarily eroded the public trust, and put the blame on the experts too, saying, "but many well-intentioned medical professionals, scientists and political leaders are also at fault."

Wen then offered her idea for restoring trust, saying it requires "that we curb the instinct to simplify public health policy. Decisions often require policymakers to weigh competing priorities and painful tradeoffs. They should own the challenge and not shy away from communicating nuance and complexity."

She added that health officials "didn’t acknowledge" the nuances, like that fact natural immunity of those who once had COVID-19 kept them safe from the virus. She wrote, "Instead, any expert who even brought up studies supporting natural immunity, myself included, were accused of spreading disinformation."

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Wen then claimed, "The public health community must do better. We should display more humility and acknowledge what we don’t know."