Vaccines and Blood Plasma

The president has done two things that are very dangerous. The first is that the FDA authorized the emergency use of blood plasma. The second is that he intends to approve a vaccine before critical phase three testing. In other words, he intends to follow Vladimir Putin who already did this with the Russian vaccine, dubbed Sputnik-V.

There are few things to be said about this. The first is that blood plasma as a treatment is not new. It’s been around for a long time. It was treatment during the 1918 Influenza epidemic, for example. So it is not a breakthrough technologically. However, we do not have we had the necessary testing to make sure this old treatment works with COVID-19. To ensure this, you need double-blind medical studies. This is the way to do it. It’s a modern scientific standard

Donald Trump does not care about that. He wants this to be emergency authorized because he is desperate for a victory over the virus. He does not care about science, or whether it works. He just wants to tell all of us that he has found a cure. What he did with the FDA, essentially pressuring them to do an emergency authorization, is exactly what happens in authoritarian states. Yes, we know the FDA says they were not, but in reality in authoritarian states pressured agencies do not admit to it either.