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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
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And it wasn’t “experimental”, because mRNA drugs had been in the works for fifty years.
I think most people fail to grasp how much danger he must have been in for someone to say "lets inject this experimental drug into the President of the United States" and everyone else in the room going "yeah, that's probably our best course at this point".
That is one of the craziest things in presidential history IMO and almost no one seems to think it's a big deal when I bring it up.
Fair. That or Teddy banging out the second half of a speech with bullet in his chest have got to be the craziest moments in presidential medical care.
That isn't the smoking gun you think.
What are we to infer from the fact that after 50 years not one mRNA drug had been approved by the FDA? Human clinical trials on mRNA drugs started in 2001. Human trials on mRNA vaccines started in 2013. By 2021 no mRNA drug had FDA approval after years of development and testing.
But the COVID vaccines were all set after 7 months? No longer term data might have been beneficial in decision making?
For comparison AdderalXR was in clinical trials for 2 years, and this was after Adderal was already approved by the FDA and it was part of a well known class of drugs.
The COVID vaccines were among humanity's greatest accomplishments. I'm not suggesting the FDA cut any corners. I personally believe taking them was the right thing to do.
BUT they absolutely were a calculated risk, with no long term data, and there was a concerted effort to mislead the public about that.
That's entirely fair.
But I think that hesitancy was responsible and justified. It's not like we grappled with our moral quandries, and were able to move forward because we had cleared those intellectual hurdles.
We just decided that those risks, which weren't worth it a year prior, were now worth it when compared to the risk of extending the pandemic. Everything that gave them pause for twenty years was still in play. It was an informed risk, and it worked out incredibly well.
But it's not like they were rolling out this season's update to the flu shot, and we shouldn't pretend it is.