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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.
The whole vaccine rollout had the theme of "all that is not compulsory is forbidden." That is: adults were banned from taking vaccines until the FDA had satisfactorily hemmed and hawed over the trials; afterward, vaccines became compulsory for quite a lot of everyday activities. This was similar (though more dramatic) story as masks-- masks were heavily discouraged by the CDC right up to the point where the CDC began mandating them.
In general the FDA and CDC are really really bad at expressing any epistemic attitude that isn't "utter certainty", even in the frequent occasions that the info available doesn't justify certainty.
For that reason I think it's basically coherent to say that the FDA was too restrictive and too pushy about the vaccines.
EDIT: This was also true of boosters! Boosters were forbidden roughly until the FDA began mandating them in order to be "fully vaccinated".
Entities were banned from testing people for COVID-19 while the CDC spent weeks coming up with and distributing their own, broken test mechanisms.
Good times.
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