[giraffe_lady]

Vaccines are already double blind tested with a placebo, but the yearly updates for seasonal vaccines based on a previously tested mechanism are not. The goal of this new requirement is to create delays making it effectively impossible to create annual flu & covid vaccines within these constraints.

The reason the updates aren't currently tested this way is because medical research ethics perspectives on the balance of risk of novel unknown effects vs known risk of withholding effective treatment from the placebo group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_equipoise

[jljljl]

Yeah that makes sense. If there was an update of MMR, and there was a 50/50 chance that your child does not actually get vaccinated against MMR, you’d refuse to participate in the trial.