Credentialism is just ad-hominem

From We are doomed: attacks on Leana Wen and Monica Gandhi by Vinay Prasad.

Recently a junior person told me about a stupid, zero covid policy in her hospital that blocked visitors. She wanted to speak out against it, but ultimately felt it wasn’t worth it. “it is crazy we can’t even say obvious things.”

What she meant was: in the current climate of lunacy, you cannot even point out flawed, illogical, pointless covid policies without being victim of a mob of fellow doctors. In fact, just yesterday, some such physicians were furious with dropping the cloth mask mandate (when not eating) rule on airplanes. Some tweeted that dropping the cloth mask requirement on airplanes would result in babies dying. This hyperbolic rhetoric lacks empirical support— there is no evidence a cloth mask mandate saves babies. But moreover, is illogical: by their own logic, eating pretzels on the flight meant babies die (as you lower your mask to eat them), and yet they were silent. No pretzel is worth the life of a child! Where was the outrage over that?

Recently, peak criticism has fallen on the shoulders of Leana Wen and Monica Gandhi. Not a day goes by where I don’t see a fellow doctor attacking these two professionals. Let me be clear. They don’t attack the policy ideas espoused by the two; they often name them directly and target their attacks on them personally. Often using the screenshot tool, and luring their own merry band of trolls to attack.

One doctor faulted Dr. Wen for lacking credentials. But she was the former Baltimore public health commissioner! Surely she is more than qualified to comment on public health policy! But even if she didn’t hold this post, why not focus on her argument? Credentialism is just ad-hominem.