[atleta]

Well, they weren't really proposing solutions, Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were really just suggestions, candidates. I.e. ideas for what might work. Now in both both cases there were no reasons why anyone would think they could work, but as far as I know, in both cases there were multiple trials. And those trials didn't show effectiveness (hence these were not solutions) and despite this, the crackpots did continue to push both for a while and then they silently dropped Hydroxychloroquine but the ivermectin delusion is still strong. (At least where I live, before most discussion was washed away by the war in Ukraine a few months ago, it was still being brought up.)

Now the thing about believing and science is that it's being told to people who don't do science (so most of us!) but have strong opinion and minimal knowledge about a specific topic. If you ask them, most of them will say they don't believe science or scientists. But what it means is not what you suggest, i.e. a lack of blind faith, but an active rejection of what science has to say about this topic without having the alternative explanations/solutions you're talking about. And I mean scientifically proven ones, of course.

So suggesting that laymen should believe (i.e. trust) science is actually a pretty adequate and reasonable advice. Since you basically have to sane options:

- believe/trust science (the knowledge gathered by those who work on a specific topic)

- work on that specific topic yourself (scientifically)