"Profit motives, individual incentives, systematic biases are real problems, and have significant influence over the decisions of lawmakers, regulators, and media in some cases. I don’t think the early approval of vaccines is one of those cases "
Why not?
The early aprpoval was clearly a political decision, and contrary to the norm with prior approval schedules and protocols (these new tech vaccines wouldn't be approved for the better part of a decade prior, and suddenly there were designed and approved in less than a year).
There was also a huge profit motive to present them as better than they are (if I remember correctly, with some comical statements throw in, like a company touting 93% effectiveness, only for their main competitor to claim 95% effectiveness a week later, upon their presentation).
Vaccines can very well be effective. But the fast-track approval was very much a politicial decision, the padding of trial results very much profit driven, and the market war between vaccine companies also influenced media and country-media portrayal of one or another (overblowing the failures of one, and diminishing of another, and ditto for the successes).
I've read a few of your essays and think you must have read Aleksander Zinoviev. The Yawning Heights? The Radiant Future?
"Profit motives, individual incentives, systematic biases are real problems, and have significant influence over the decisions of lawmakers, regulators, and media in some cases. I don’t think the early approval of vaccines is one of those cases "
Why not?
The early aprpoval was clearly a political decision, and contrary to the norm with prior approval schedules and protocols (these new tech vaccines wouldn't be approved for the better part of a decade prior, and suddenly there were designed and approved in less than a year).
There was also a huge profit motive to present them as better than they are (if I remember correctly, with some comical statements throw in, like a company touting 93% effectiveness, only for their main competitor to claim 95% effectiveness a week later, upon their presentation).
Vaccines can very well be effective. But the fast-track approval was very much a politicial decision, the padding of trial results very much profit driven, and the market war between vaccine companies also influenced media and country-media portrayal of one or another (overblowing the failures of one, and diminishing of another, and ditto for the successes).