Will we become COVID vaccine lab critters soon?

03 August 2020

American COVID experiment number 5

The public might get to safety-test rushed-to-market SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

And conceivably, given how everything else has (often tyrannically) been going — whether we want to or not.

Background

The Trump Administration began Operation Warp Speed in April 2020.

It was aimed at developing an anti-COVID vaccine more quickly than Anthony Fauci had estimated was possible (18 months). Which itself was an almost lunatic, historically and biologically speaking, expression of optimism.

Surprisingly, given that this is boastful Toddling Donny at work, the Warp Speed initiative was not formally announced.

The program's under-the-radar quality just might indicate that Warp Speed had political purposes that the Trumpster Fire did not want widely probed:

In April, with hospitals overwhelmed and much of the United States in lockdown, the Department of Health and Human Services produced a presentation for the White House arguing that rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine was the best hope to control the pandemic.

“DEADLINE: Enable broad access to the public by October 2020,” the first slide read, with the date in bold.

Given that it typically takes years to develop a vaccine, the timetable for the initiative, called Operation Warp Speed, was incredibly ambitious.

It escaped no one that the proposed deadline also intersected nicely with President Trump’s need to curb the virus before the election in November.

“There are a lot of people on the inside of this process who are very nervous about whether the administration is going to reach their hand into the Warp Speed bucket, pull out one or two or three vaccines, and say, ‘We’ve tested it on a few thousand people, it looks safe, and now we are going to roll it out,’” said Dr. Paul A. Offit of the University of Pennsylvania, who is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee.

“They are really worried about that,” he added. “And they should be.”

Warp Speed, admirably in my estimation . . .

. . . takes the daunting financial risk out of vaccine development. It pays manufacturers for the entirety of the FDA's now-abbreviated COVID vaccine testing process.

See, for example, the following interview with vaccine expert (and co-inventor) Dr. Paul Offit:

ZDoggMD, Are We Rushing A COVID-19 Vaccine? Dr. Paul Offit, YouTube (31 July 2020)

On the other hand

Whether the Administration fairly selected the recipients' of the billions of dollars transfer (of taxpayer money) is a different question.

Never underestimate Plutocratic Cronyism's love of graft.

For instance, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, whom the Administration chose to be chief scientific advisor to the Warp Speed project, had financial ties to two of the chosen companies.

Can the FDA-approval system save us from becoming COVID lab animals again?

Probably not.

Check out this lame reassurance:

While eager to bring products to market as quickly as possible, [drug companies] face risks in moving too quickly in order to fit an election calendar, analysts said.

“They are acutely aware of the political dynamic here,” said Rob Smith, the director of Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm.

A vaccine that flopped would jeopardize their broader business, he said, and it would not make sense “to take a huge reputational risk not just for your vaccine but for all the products across your portfolio to benefit the president politically.”

According to that reasoning . . .

We are counting on Corporatism's, exclusively self-interested avarice, to be our friend and save us from the Trump vaccine program's very probably soon-arriving safety shortcuts.

I am not being partisan.

I would not have trusted "King of Hypocrites" Obama — or "Iraq Victory Is Ours" Bush-2 — with such a rollout, under these hysterical circumstances, either.

Trusting Robber Baron mentalities . . .

. . . to protect the American Public is laughable.

They know that, if a forthcoming COVID vaccine kills or maims folks (because of foreseeably inadequate testing) the always forgetful American public will only remember (who did what to whom) for about 5 minutes.

Then, everything will go back to American normal— meaning:

raking Lucre in

and

casually sweeping the Fallen under

permanently quiet

and

secrets-keeping grass.

If Big Pharma's sense of reputation-control is what we are hanging the American public's well-being on, we are ignoring years and years of previous medical industry litigation.

Litigation, that was aimed at partially compensating for the (often deliberately indulged) wrongs that the pharmaceutical and medical device industries have frequently committed.

Keep in mind also, that our Predatory System's regulatory apparatus often does not work.

Our culture's ingrained Ayn Rand-ian Avarice intentionally weakens it into uselessness.

See, for example:

here (conflicts of financial interest among medical guideline panels)

here (guideline creators profit from biased medical recommendations)

here (medical establishment twists semantics for loot)

The moral? — Don't be a guinea pig, unless . . .

. . . you take the time to think your volunteered lab critter-ism through.

No one with perceptible influence is looking out for the United States' regular folk.

American COVID management (if it can be called that) has been exclusively about money, power and broadcasting the lies and distortions necessary to accumulate both.

There is no one leading this mess, including Dr. Fauci, whom I would not trust beyond coronavirus-spitting distance.

Note

If you doubt some people's suspicion of Dr. Fauci, read this (hit-piece, with attached comments) overview here.

Its main points accord with my own memory of Fauci's career.

You don't get survive well over three decades at the top of the Federal bureaucracy, without having long ago sold most of whatever level of integrity you began with.

His integrity-waffling behavior during the COVID pandemic (alone) makes that clear enough. Under circumstances in which he did not actually need to lie or distort, he did anyway. Go figure.

Eventually, we're all trapped by the personal nature that we have allowed ourselves to become.

A superbly successful bureaucracy-wielding politician, Fauci is.

But actual scientist, medical expert, caring physician and beacon of integrity — no.

PeteFree.com

Will we become COVID vaccine lab critters soon?