Did the FDA Deliberately Help Biden Win?
If so, do you approve?
The FDA and Pfizer arranged to have the tests that ended up showing their vaccine more than 90% effective done last Wednesday, the day after the election. It's clear from the account of what happened that there were multiple decisions that could have been made a little differently and would have produced the information a little sooner.
The obvious conjecture is that the timing was deliberate, that they expected a positive result and thought that announcing it before the election would help Trump. The alternative is that this is just another example of the FDA being (I think over) cautious, making absolutely certain the vaccine works, at a cost of about a thousand lives for every day of delay.
The more interesting question, for me, is whether Biden supporters believe that if it did happen, they approve. Would such a decision count as indefensibly using powers given to the FDA for entirely different purposes to meddle in the election, or as a responsible decision to save America from another four years of Trump? How deeply is "The end does/doesn't justify the means" embedded in the value system of commenters here and on FB, where I also posted a version of this?
Also of interest is whether there are any Trump supporters who believe that, if it happened, it was a defensible, if unfortunate, decision, that they would approve if something similar had been done by someone on their side.
You can find my view of the ends/means question in the relevant chapter at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/…/Ideas%20I_%20A%20Book%20fro…
That's a collection of draft chapters for the book I'm currently writing.
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