How does this work? You sign up for the program when you're sick and you might get meds that help you? That would really suck if a loved one was in the program and died because they happened to get the placebo.
Trials like this are performed in desperate situations, and you only ever hear about the success stories. Most such trials probably result in no measurable benefit, and run the risk of an even worse outcome than the placebo.
When to Stop a Clinical Trial Early for Benefit: Lessons Learned and Future Approaches:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCHEARTFAILURE.111...
> In this case the alternative to the trial would be the […] option of no treatment
So the alternative is what we do now, which indeed is the ‘dangerous’ option.
If it does conclusively show effectiveness quite quickly, often they will cut the phase of the trial short and put everybody on the actual drug I think.
Real science does have a price.
I'm not following. Are you under the impression that the COVID-19 vaccine trials weren't similarly double blinded?
The rest of your post doesn't reflect any government position that I'm currently aware of. Both my local government and the CDC encouraged me to go outside, while maintaining distancing, after the initial lockdown.
I have seen plenty of scientists with all kinds of statements, the worst being ‘oh if you got infected, it’s your own fault because you clearly didn’t stay 1.5 m from other people. Because otherwise it is impossible to get infected!’
Those models were based on a very old mistake and had no basis in reality: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
It's a very long read, but worth it. Basically, the social distancing measures were based on two things: That the primary spread vector was "droplets", and that they fell to the ground pretty quickly (before they could spread beyond ~6 feet).
The mistake the title refers to is that the medical definition that distinguishes "droplet" vs "aerosol" isn't the same as any other context, such as when used when determining how far the particles can travel. The cutoff between "droplet" and "aerosol" in the medical context came from a Tuberculosis study about how far different particle sizes could penetrate into the lungs. Only later were those numbers mistakenly used as the cutoff for "droplets" vs "aerosols" in general, leading to a lot of confusion over 2020: SARS-CoV-2 really does spread primarily through aerosols, not droplets, as defined in any context other than that medical mistake.
From a cursory search of NEJM and PubMed, I can't find evidence that any US-approved vaccines were allowed to run unblinded trials. But I could be wrong.
Part of that price is honesty on what's truly known, indicated, suggested, hypothesized, or unknown. What is "blathering" to you is intellectual integrity to others.