No they aren't. We should not be hero-worshiping anyone. Not the military, not the "COVID essential workers", not the health care providers and not scientists. This is a religious type indoctrination and people that don't believe it become heretics. I'm done with any type of moralizing of any group of people.

My dad was a scientist. He was not a superhero. The people he worked with were not superheroes. In fact, they were all thin-skinned, selfish pricks that wanted to keep everything for themselves with no sense of helping others, etc. It was a zero-sum game in his laboratory so the competition was toxic.

Most scientists are desperate for their next round of funding. They will do anything to get it, and it incentivizes them to not do anything against the grain. The real scientific community isn't so magnanimous or selfless at all, it's almost the opposite.