I like a lot of what @balajis.eth (👋) says on the network state but I think he's very wrong on circumventing FDA regs for covid treatments. There are very significant reasons why clinical trials should take as long as they do (and why Op Warp Speed will be found to have been a massive mistake).

Complexity explorer. Residing in the liminal.

What compelling arguments have you found that Operation Warp Speed will be found to have been a massive mistake?

“Good casts: eclectic, quirky, witty” - @botornot

I should state my creds first, 10yrs in pharma/biotech delivering R&D and manufacturing projects for Pfizer, AZ, GSK, Novartis, Dupont, and various cellular therapy companies in US, UK, EU and AU. They all spent an enormous amount of time, effort and money on very extensive clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy.

The clinical trials phased process has been developed over decades to gather the empirical data in a rigorous and repeatable way needed to establish the veracity of a drug's effectiveness. The process phases have evolved in rigour as problems were encountered and resolved ("form follows failure"), e.g. thalidomide.

All the people I worked with were extremely professional and conscientious, they knew that to do it right takes time and great care, i.e. you can't and shouldn't cut corners. To have adequate proof that a drug is fit to market requires longitudinal studies that run for years and use randomised control trials.

FDA is the gatekeeper for v/high standards. But when the Pfizer phase3 trial was declared a win after only 90 days & the control group was negated, my alarm bells went off. This was unprecedented & no sound evidence was presented that warranted breaking thru the gates & tearing up the “Chesterton's Fences”.

Some interesting longitudinal studies are starting to be published. It's a complex multivariant problem space and will take a very long time to untangle and draw out useful insights and principles. One of the big challenges is access to clean data sets, which is inexcusable.

Interesting. That happened two years ago. Haven’t seen anything yet that would make me question that doing trials faster was a mistake? 
1000s of papers have analyzed millions of people. I was against forced vaccine mandates but haven’t seen much against the vaccines

There are so many systemic issues to address now that I’d be foolish to think I’ve any great insight on what could/should have been done. My position is that we need to rely on empirical scientific processes & uphold high standards of ethics & integrity. This would include complete openness & transparency of the da

Thanks for your thoughtful response. From that perspective, would the best course of action have been continuing thorough mask wearing and other mitigation measures until the longitudinal studies are completed and widespread vaccination could be more scientifically considered?