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Comment by ummonk | Hacker News Reader

I hate Trump's bullying tactics as much as the next person, but let's be clear - the FDA had completed its data analysis and released it a few days ago, and then the advisory panel yesterday supported its endorsement. At this point it was clear the vaccine was safe and effective, and an EUA should be rapidly announced by the FDA, whether the Trump would pressure them or not.

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I don't understand then, why would the FDA need to be threatened? Wouldn't they try to move as fast as possible within the bounds of reason?

Trump threatening someone does not imply they needed to be threatened.

It is possible he was just pissed at any delay at all. I am just feeling extremely skeptical about believing any of these people as their goal is to get us to forget about the pandemic and get back to work at maximum productivity regardless of whether this thing works.

I mean obviously this was not the case, since they announced they would definitely approve it but not for a few more days. We are talking about government bureaucrats here after all.

Actually prior to the threat they stated that they would approve it as fast as possible and were targeting Saturday morning. Trumps bullying sped things up by about 12 hours.

Note that the approval date has absolutely nothing to do with the production schedule, which is the real limiting factor here. Having a few hundred people get their shots on Saturday instead of Tuesday or whatever isn't realistically going to move the needle. Every dose we can get is going into a patient somewhere.

I saw on the news today that the vaccine was sitting waiting for the approval to ship. So yeah, getting approval sooner will get the vaccine shipping sooner.

Scale-up work and production started at the end of the summer.

Yes, and every dose produced so far is ready to go into a patient immediately, they don't have a stockpile for the whole society, not remotely. Two days or whatever isn't going to matter that much. The timing of the first few thousand doses will change, the timing of the first ten million doses has to do with production and shipping, not approval.

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