Thread by @PMatzko

Here's a partial list of the FDA's astonishing failures during the covid-19 pandemic:

- delayed the development of an effective covid test by at least six weeks

thedispatch.com/p/timeline-the…

- failed to remove barriers to PPE production for weeks after a national emergency was declared

cato.org/publications/c…

- added weeks (at minimum) and months (at maximum) to the approval process for the vaccines, most notably by taking from November 20 to December 11 to complete a review at a time when ~2,000 people were dying per day.

biospace.com/article/why-is…

- despite those delays, ostensibly to build public acceptance of the vaccine, the recommendation committee still had 4 members vote 'no' on nit-picky issues, doing so regardless of how it gave fuel to anti-vaxxer skeptics.

businessinsider.com/why-experts-vo…

- failed to tell clinicians administering the vaccine for the first week of the rollout that additional doses contained in vials could be used, likely causing the waste of an unknown number of the limited supply of doses then available.

medscape.com/viewarticle/94….

- shown no interest in pursuing an accelerated rollout strategy of "first doses first" for high risk individuals and healthcare workers, something that the UK and Israel have done.

gov.uk/government/new…

We have an ongoing, albeit morbid, water-cooler debate at Cato over which government agency is responsible for the most preventable deaths.

I used to be on the Department of Defense corner, but the pandemic has shown that it's the FDA, hands down.

#AbolishtheFDA

Their aversion to any kind of risk, failure to weigh opportunity costs, general bureaucratic incompetence, and inability to pursue any kind of cooperation or reciprocity with foreign peers is responsible for thousands of preventable deaths every year, not just during a pandemic.