Those people spent many years learning to understand, diagnose, and treat thousands of medical issues. During that entire time, they were continuously sleep deprived as a matter of culture. Those that could not handle this environment dropped out. They're probably still sleep deprived. They may have learned about sleep's medical effects, but the personal experience of those who survived the selection process who work 120-hour weeks and have been waking patients up once an hour for years has a blinding effect on this diagnosis.
It's a bit like bringing someone from south Florida to northern Michigan this winter for some ice fishing. I understand that it's cold here, I intellectually know about, have observed the effects of, and can treat frostbite and other problems resulting from this cold - but all that would make it hard for me to intuit the problems of a visitor who was unable to control their fingers when they removed their gloves and dipped their hands into a minnow bucket to bait a hook. My fingers work fine in that bucket, everyone else on the lake is doing it, you're just going to dry them off in a few seconds and put them back in warm gloves...what's the issue?
It's a bit like bringing someone from south Florida to northern Michigan this winter for some ice fishing. I understand that it's cold here, I intellectually know about, have observed the effects of, and can treat frostbite and other problems resulting from this cold - but all that would make it hard for me to intuit the problems of a visitor who was unable to control their fingers when they removed their gloves and dipped their hands into a minnow bucket to bait a hook. My fingers work fine in that bucket, everyone else on the lake is doing it, you're just going to dry them off in a few seconds and put them back in warm gloves...what's the issue?