[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.