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A pure hypothetical thought experiment: imagine it occurs that the Pfizer mRNA vaccination + all booster follow-ups (4+ shots) regimen is disastrous to health, and has a high 10-year mortality rate. In other words, those who strictly adhered to the recommended CDC/Pfizer vaccination schedule have a 25% of dying by the decade’s end, or some such risk. What would be the public’s response and what would be the just punishment for those involved?
I think in such a hypothetical, the whole political climate of 21st century neo-neoliberalism will be fundamentally altered. There would be a huge rightward shift on distrust to authorities, especially but not limited to scientists and public health authorities. I don’t think the public would be satisfied with Fauci and other heads being tried, and will demand sentences for the thousands of individuals involved in the decision similar to what we would see in the Nuremberg trials. This would also fundamentally change the political climate, as the “vax-maxxed” lean left.
Excuse me for laughing here, but the whole discourse around the vaccine(s) and health risks now showing up is just an impossible situation. People have been complaining that the FDA were foot-dragging on useful drugs and that we were all grown-up adults who could evaluate the risks for ourselves and if a drug was risky, let us take the risk. Then the vaccines were pushed through fast and everyone said this was good and sensible and should be the way things work.
And now there are complaints of "too fast! too risky! not enough tests! Big Pharma only interested in profits! The experts should have held up the process until it was all accounted for!"
So do we want fast but risky, or slow but sure, and whatever decision happened, there would be criticism about the effects on the health of the general public (e.g. if the vaccines had been trialled the usual way, "millions will die that could be avoided by simple vaccination programme, vaccination is a long-established practice that has been proven to be safe, what is the hold-up?")
I'm not saying The Experts were flawless, but the public is fickle.
Early on I was swayed by more by my more libertarian friends saying "Hey, the FDA has always been way too cautious, it is dumb to worry that they were excessively swayed by the drug companies or were overly hasty in approving the vaccine, if they approve it, it must be pretty good."
Now I think that the FDA (and even more so, the CDC) is just bad its job, so sometimes it will be way too conservative in blocking experimental medicine, and other times way too hasty and gung-ho about approving medicine that does not really show a good cost-benefit ratio. If the FDA was good at its job it would be requiring a large, randomized control study of the MRNA shots that would be ongoing, that would look at both efficacy and overall mortality.
One thing I did not appreciate is how easily FDA "approval" turns into private mandates. A lot of people and institutions in our society are simply deferring to the FDA and CDC for judgement so if they approve it that is there signal to mandate it. I read the data about the covid jab in kids and it seemed like the cost-benefit was decidedly negative. That said, I was fine if the FDA wanted to allow parents who thought it might work for their particular kid to obtain it. And even when they approved it some of the officials said that they don't recommend that every kid just blindly get it. But then the CDC issued a recommendation, and then camps and classes I want my kids to attend started requiring the jab. There was simply no space for personal choice either way, no space for approved for those who wanted it, but not mandated.
It would be nice if there was a publicly acknowledged FDA stamp of "might work, use at your own risk but we don't recommend it." I guess that is what emergency use authorization was supposed to be. But somehow that is not what has happened.
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