Failure to the left of me, failure to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with the consequences

The FDA and CDC have attracted criticism in the past couple of decades from the center and right of the political spectrum.  Usually for inappropriate mission creep and/or general ineffectiveness.  

Criticisms which have been borne out in the Covid-19 Pandemic.  It has been a vague riff on Ralph Nader's old "Unsafe at Any Speed."  

From FDA Postpones Inspections Delaying New Drugs and Creating Shortages of Old Drugs by Alex Tabarrok.  

Let’s review. The FDA prevented private firms from offering SARS-Cov2 tests in the crucial early weeks of the pandemic, delayed the approval of vaccines, took weeks to arrange meetings to approve vaccines even as thousands died daily, failed to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine, failed to quickly approve rapid antigen tests, and failed to perform inspections necessary to keep pharmaceutical supply lines open.

 I keep saying that I view the Covid-19 pandemic as a fortuitous stress test.  Had its lethality been higher and more demographically catholic, the catastrophe would have been substantial.  As it is, most nations show all causes mortality increases for 2020 but not too significantly outside of recent trends but also certainly not as high as those in the early 1980s and earlier.  

Most of our suffering has arisen from well-intentioned but poorly thought though medical and social policies.

My sincere hope is that rather than finger-pointing and blame allocation, by the end of the year we can turn our political will to making our key health institutions such as FDA and CDC more nimble, focused, and effective.  One can hope.

But not dissimilarly to Covid-19, the 2020 election has left the majority of the American public, across the political spectrum skeptical about the integrity of our voting mechanisms.  It is of little value to re-litigate the election but we should be able to expect Congress to tighten up and standardize national and local processes so that the majority of the electorate believe the results to be fraudulent.

Regrettably, Congress seems to be focusing on institutionalizing the electoral practices which called the results into question.  Hopefully we can do better with the post mortem of the institutional failures associated with Covid-19.