This overstates the difficulty of crowd-sourcing expert consensus. Even if two percent of experts are saying "!X" about the pandemic, then yes, that's still a lot of people and it's easy to find one to counter mainstream opinion "X". However, if you filter inept science journalism, populist narrative, etc., and listen to experts in relevant fields, it's pretty easy very early on to identify the 98%-ish consensus.
The 2% of "everyone" who doesn't know the earth is round, doesn't really impede the reliability of everyone knowing the world is round. Likewise, the "what every expert knows" (maybe not futurist prophesying, but at least about what is true today) is accessible, useful and pretty up-to-date.
The 2% of "everyone" who doesn't know the earth is round, doesn't really impede the reliability of everyone knowing the world is round. Likewise, the "what every expert knows" (maybe not futurist prophesying, but at least about what is true today) is accessible, useful and pretty up-to-date.