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I’m sure that someone must have already posed this question, but, if so, I’ve not yet seen it: Why do not the Covid-19 lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions have to meet the same strict standard in the United States that the FDA requires new drugs and medical devices to meet?
New drugs and medical devices cannot be made available to the general public, even through prescriptions by physicians, until these are proven – to the satisfaction of FDA bureaucrats – to be both safe and effective. Americans are denied access to any drug or medical device that isn’t certified to have such proof. Can’t be too safe, dontchaknow!
Why does no one demand that any proposed Covid restriction be proven to meet the same standard before governors, mayors, public-health bureaucrats, and other pooh-bahs are allowed to prescribe it as treatment for the general public? (Actually, “prescribe” is not really the correct word; a more accurate one is “impose.” But we’ll here leave this nicety aside.)
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Although I can anticipate several of the “Oh-the-Covid-case-is-entirely-different” objections, I ask the above question without any of my tongue in my cheek. I ask the above question seriously. If any new medical intervention is presumed to be unsafe or ineffective (or both) unless and until it is proven to be otherwise, why are the Covid interventions presumed to be safe and effective? What gives?