Have you never heard of racism, bias etc? Yes, when a representative for a group does something then that will affect peoples views of that entire group and not just that person. Humans are irrational like that.
I think rationality is also figuring in all the factors, like an evolving pandemic and supply chain issues, but that's just my opinion.
The reason there are social taboos against very specific kinds of generalization is because in the past powerful and evil governments have implemented horrible policies on the basis of such generalizations. But that's an argument against letting governments pass such laws, not an argument against any form of generalization about groups of people.
In this case, public health professionals have been observed behaving as a group in very specific and abnormal ways over a long period of time. It is not merely reasonable to generalize about public health at this point, it would actually be irrational not to do so.