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Phase III trials for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines actually began in late July, a mere 4 months after declaration of the pandemic. Challenge trials were unnecessary because they wouldn't have actually sped things up. By the time of the phase III trials you could already expect vaccinated individuals to be challenged via natural infection. And I'll bet money that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were, as a practical matter, given a green light by the FDA when the first early phase III results came back, months before formal approvals (which actually came in the middle of the phase III trials); meaning there would've been no regulatory risk to pushing the manufacturing pipeline into maximum overdrive. There have been plenty of fumbles and mistakes all around, but I don't understand how people don't appreciate how incredibly fast the process has already been. IMO, the real issues involve more mundane matters of logistics--coordination, resource allocation, etc. Could the process have gone faster? Probably. Not because of safety protocols or inflexible regulations, but because we had unforced errors starting and executing trials. For example, AFAICT, trials could have started in Brazil in early June, but presumably didn't because the companies needed more time to spin things up. And of course manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine should be going much smoother. Pharmaceutical companies and, especially, governments should have thrown more resources toward growing the supply chain of machinery; it was foreseeable from the beginning because of the manifest deficiencies in the supply chain for personal protection equipment, ventilators, etc, all of which made evident the need to retool industries to be able to scale manufacturing. And governments have had almost an entire year to figure out distribution protocols, but instead it seems officials across the board in the U.S. simply assumed it would be sufficient to push vaccines through existing healthcare networks, despite the fact they're notoriously byzantine and inefficient, especially for something so time critical, and especially given the need for consistency and uniformity across the population. Is COVID-19 providing cautionary tales regarding government intervention in the free market? Absolutely. Not because governments have been intervening too much, but because they've been intervening too little; not because it has proven government more inept than private enterprise, but because private enterprise is intrinsically incapable of achieving alone the level of coordination needed to scale our response in the time required, yet we have shown ourselves too politically and fiscally risk averse to wield the tools of government in an emergency. It's like the delayed and anemic Katrina response, writ large. |
If this is true this is the most insane thing I've ever heard.
They can't have it both ways. You can't say "the FDA knew it was safe and effective so they gave the geeen light to the manufacturers" and also "they had to withhold this vaccine from the population because they didn't know if it was safe and effective".
> Is COVID-19 providing cautionary tales regarding government intervention in the free market?
I don't believe criticism of the government needs to be condensed into "government intervention good" or "government intervention bad".
I don't think the solution is smaller government or bigger government it's better government.
The FDA has royally fucked up over and over again by being far too cautious. A lot of the government fucked up when they said masks didn't work.
The CDC fucked up when they promoted vaccinating essential workers instead of the old.
And the executive branch has been far too cautious and uninvolved in ensuring we have enough high quality masks, and broadening vaccine the pipeline.