It basically comes down to risk assessment and who gets to do the assessing, doesn’t it? Medical risks, political risks and economic risks all in a giant global tangle. Had Operation Warp Speed proceeded more slowly for more thorough testing, would we have lost more people than we did? What will the ultimate cost be of closing schools for a year or more? To what degree should a public or private organization be able to impose it’s standards of risk on individuals working or doing business there? To what degree can an individual impose his standard of risk to the people around him?

Someone I know who works in Pharma claimed that mRNA technology can produce a vaccine within 2-3 weeks, and that the real time involved is testing for safety. Anything past that is at least partly a matter of judgment.