Are masks effective or ineffective against covid? Are fats good or bad for you? Are carbs bad for you? How many times a day should you eat? How much cholesterol in your food matters? What's the perfect amount of water to drink? Is veganism healthy? is paleo healthy?
Your questions seem to exploit an asymmetry between the comment you're responding to and your examples. I can't tell you "how many times a day should you eat", but I can tell you there are theoretically claims about eating which are obviously beyond the pale -- for example claims about Mystical Gurus who live for years without eating off the sunlight.
I would imagine that if I were asked to determine whether something is bad medical advice, I might consider some of the following questions:
- What is the strength of the consensus on the issue?
- Does the claim advance evidence that the consensus is wrong which actually engages with the consensus?
- Does the claim advance a powerful cause to action?
- If wrong, is the claim likely to lead to immediate or irreparable harm if followed?
- Is the claim posed authoritatively or speculatively?
- Is the person doing the posing attempting to convince others, or just expressing themselves?
- Does the claim engage with its own shortcomings or leave room for the possibility that it is wrong?
- Does the claim have only private health consequences, or does it have public health consequences?
And while each of those have a continuum of answers, I might holistically come to the conclusion that a particular claim is "bad medical advice", and I might do so fairly easily, given a certain threshold for bad medical advice.
It seems to me less that you're saying it's hard to determine that something is bad medical advice, and more that there exists some medical advice which is neither clearly bad nor good. The two things aren't in opposition.
So, I feel comfortable saying "Human beings should not drink water because it is poison" is bad medical advice -- and it was very easy for me to determine that -- while a debate about, say, whether there's a particular target amount of water or if people should just drink water when thirsty might be supported or unsupported without rising to the standard of bad medical advice.
By the standards I have just elucidated, the Maduro claim strikes me as trivially bad-faith and unsupported medical advice made declaratively to a huge audience with fairly large likely public health risk, and so I would qualify it as bad medical advice.
No it's not easy but why would Facebook be bad at it? They can consult with the worlds best. Is there any reason to believe they have performed poorly in this regard?
Are masks effective or ineffective against covid? Are fats good or bad for you? Are carbs bad for you? How many times a day should you eat? How much cholesterol in your food matters? What's the perfect amount of water to drink? Is veganism healthy? is paleo healthy?