You've said your piece. I've said mine. But since I like the myopic magic blender image...
One thing I believe to be true is that the data never speaks for itself. What data the public sees and how it comes to them are selective processes, both from the researchers that produce it and rising forces that seek to distort and manipulate it for their own purposes. Smoke and mirrors indeed. Way I see it, everybody works with a myopic magic blender plugged in between their shoulder blades, scientists, policy makers, digitial world bad actors, soccer parents, everybody. You, me, we get to choose what to feed into our blenders. You choose risk assessment/policy/government overreach asshole stuff; I choose IL6 feedback circuitry, MIS-C hypotheticals, etc. Whatever. We get to stop when it all homogenizes into a tasty smoothy that makes sense to us Others don't have that luxury. Its their job, their responsibility to try and crank it all through the hopper, imperfect as that may be, and try get a sense of it. There are often surprises along the way. You may feel they are acting at a disservice, arrogant, clouding the issue, etc. If so, it is what it is. There are lessons in humility for all of us in this pandemic. For most of us, there will be no consequences for not learning.