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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33712 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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I am not naturally sympathetic to criticizing policy or personnel decisions on the grounds that they "embolden" the wrong people, but I am going to make an exception here.

I think this is a much-longer bow than you need to draw to be opposed to RFK being in charge of vaccines. Because, y'know, he might defund or ban them, which would very directly suck.

Also, remember that Twitter replies will skew in favour of opposition, because there's a thumbs-up and no thumbs-down.

Because, y'know, he might defund or ban them, which would very directly suck.

Defund I guess maybe -- but most vaccines were invented 50 like years ago and are kinda cheap?

By what mechanism do you think RFK would ban vaccines though?

By what mechanism do you think RFK would ban vaccines though?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the org chart, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is among other things in charge of the FDA and could order it to rescind approval, and unless I'm misunderstanding something about US law that would mean they couldn't be traded in or administered.

It's worse than that -- as I see his successful confirmation would be a powerful advanced signal to those involved in the research and development of novel vaccines. Not just because of what he would literally do (although he could indeed have the FDA hold them up or otherwise increase the already-staggering cost of new treatments) but because of what it implies about the range of consensus views on vaccines.

At the same time, defeating his nomination would send a signal that his views are sufficiently out there that firms making vaccines don't have to worry about it.

Given the timelines of these things, these dynamics seem far more important than the specific FDA decisions to be made in the next 4 years (which, anyway, were baked-in years ago).

What probability do you assign to this outcome? You may be poorly calibrated here.

Of him trying? Dunno, don't know his positions or conflict-comfort well enough.

Of him trying and it sticking? <10%, if nothing else he'd probably be impeached for that.

Thought about editing one of the above posts to note these but didn't get around to it.

There's essentially zero possibility of this. Congress doesn't exercise direct oversight much, but they do on occasion, and RFK attempting to ban vaccines would certainly result in it.

Even before that, any serious changes to the FDA's approval process would either trigger the APA, or be close enough that courts would have easy opportunity to be pulled in. And attempting to slowboat things by just crawling up vaccine production facility tailpipes with thick rubber gloves trying to find the slightest mistake runs into the problem where that's already the FDA's normal procedure.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we had a category for things other than "mandatory" and "banned"?

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