[cbsmith]

I wouldn't call it a damning indictment.

You set up institutions to protect the status quo. Individuals can go ahead with risks and experiments, but you don't want to risk an entire society with someone's wild idea. For every wild idea that works out, there's many more that didn't.

Of course we should mitigate risks before potentially destroying society.

[andreilys]

Institutions operating in "peace-time" mode during war-time are failing the people they are supposed to represent.

Continuing to protect the status quo during a national emergency is irresponsible and leads to countless lives lost.

[cbsmith]

Part of the trick is determining what the baseline risk levels are and what safeguards should be dispensed with. It's not binary "peace-time" vs. "war-time". It's about the baseline risk factors.

Aside from societal risk, there's individual risk too. When a society's mortality rate drops, it is appropriate to have more safeguards, and when it increases, it is appropriate to have fewer safeguards.

...and then there's also the systemic effects of a broader, more relaxed approach to funding. While distributing $50 million means you're getting high quality leads, if you're in charge of a $5 billion funding program (which the NIH did manage: https://covid19.nih.gov/funding), the net effect of opening up the flood gates is going to be very different. Even if you do a good job of distributing that money (and that is, in itself a HUGE challenge), you're going to be dealing with law suits and political challenges that you'd not deal with for a $50 million fund.

It may suck, but it's the reality of large systems.