The specific evidence you’ve cited is weak.
(1) You write that “The argument that we should be listening to experts and not random people would make a lot of sense if the “armchair” folks didn’t keep being right.” It is extremely easy to be right on a binary question (react more vs less). That many non-experts were right is therefore more-or-less meaningless. (I can also cite many, many examples of non-experts being wrong. I think what we want is the fraction of experts vs non-experts who were right, but that seems both vague and unobtainable.)
(Note that this is importantly different, and stronger, than the claim you made in the final paragraph. I agree with that claim.)
(2) For many, but probably not all, of the policy failures you describe, there is little reason to attribute them to experts. The United States is not a technocracy.
The specific evidence you’ve cited is weak. (1) You write that “The argument that we should be listening to experts and not random people would make a lot of sense if the “armchair” folks didn’t keep being right.” It is extremely easy to be right on a binary question (react more vs less). That many non-experts were right is therefore more-or-less meaningless. (I can also cite many, many examples of non-experts being wrong. I think what we want is the fraction of experts vs non-experts who were right, but that seems both vague and unobtainable.)
(Note that this is importantly different, and stronger, than the claim you made in the final paragraph. I agree with that claim.)
(2) For many, but probably not all, of the policy failures you describe, there is little reason to attribute them to experts. The United States is not a technocracy.
The posts I’m referring to made claims that were much stronger than “we should be reacting more”. If you look through https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca and https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727, and the follow-up https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56 they’re making detailed claims about how the world is and how it will soon be.