Now we're distributing the vaccine, but the bottleneck is that we have to keep waiting for rainy days. It's especially bad in Arizona and Nevada. Is your contention that we keep the rainy day requirement? Even when all are scientific and empirical priors tell us that the effect is de minims.
The example is kind of silly, but it makes my point. There's literally countless number of factors that go into any trial. There's no possible way that the way treatment is deployed in the field will exactly match the way it was tested. Yet doctors, scientists and public health experts use judgement and empirical priors to determine when and where we can relax the requirements.
Experts do not agree.
They certainly do. And the FDA, a collection of the leading doctors, scientists, and public health experts, just told you that two doses is the regimen. Is there something that you know that these experts don't?
As for more general critiques, there’s mountains of evidence that the FDA is too risk averse, even before Covid.
Specific to this instance, this FDA meeting was a formality -- they had already had the data for two weeks to review. The efficacy was well-known. They chose to take a 4-day holiday (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday).
People don't all of a sudden sign house contracts. They've germinated the idea, spent weeks or months working through the pros and cons, talking to their life partners and family and agent and mortgage broker. The decision is made well in advance of the actual contract signing, and all the red lines are done before you get to the actual meeting to sign on the line. Similarly with the FDA regulators, they weren't meeting to review the data for the first time and come up with a decision on the spot. This was one final step in a very long process.
While nearly ten thousand Americans died, I guess the FDA was “catching up on its sleep”. Eight long days of glorious sleep!
Because if it's over 50%, then the math is very simple. First doses must go first. Here's my simple proposal: I bet you $500 that the first peer-reviewed study to specifically test one-dose mRNA Covid-19 vaccines finds at least 50% effectiveness.
Talk is cheap, and I'm sure you get a lot of upvotes on Reddit and Twitter by sprouting some "Follow the Science" hashtag. But actual people's lives are on the line, so if you won't even risk a little bit of money on your beliefs, stop risking people's lives.
3-4 weeks are quite short intervals for booster shots, picked because of the urgency of getting results, not because it's optimal from a medical standpoint.
> FDA, a collection of the leading doctors, scientists, and public health experts
FDA is primarily a regulatory bureaucracy, tasked with enforcing federal law in this area. The incentives it is under do not always align with optimizing public health.
I'm not sure I would describe the FDA as optimistically as you do - they are a collection of federal employees, leaning heavily on private industry expertise to navigate the demands of politicians, the expectations of the public, and needs of businesses.