Irrationality

Senate Progressive-Democrats are growing increasingly hysterical over the thought of President Donald Trump nominating someone—anyone—to fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court and the majority Republican Senate confirming the nominee (never minding that confirmation is far from a done deal). It’s especially overt with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY):

All the rights enshrined in our Constitution that are supposed to be protected by the Supreme Court of the United States. All the rights that could be undone or unwound by a conservative majority on the court.

Never mind that preserving and strengthening these rights are the explicit goals of those 18th Century Liberals who wrote and ratified our Constitution and of today’s Conservatives and conservative Republicans. Never mind that it’s the liberal, living Constitution bloc on the Court and Progressive-Democrats generally who demand to be able to alter that conservative document or to disregard it altogether.

Schumer went on.

By every modicum of decency and honor, Leader McConnell and the Republican majority have no right to fill [the empty seat].

Of course. Because there is no modicum of decency and honor in satisfying a Constitution-originated obligation to fill a Supreme Court seat—or any other vacancy—promptly so the Court—or any other agency—can function at maximum efficiency.

All Schumer—all the Progressive-Democratic Party—have to offer is this sort of wholly illogical, irrational “argument.”

Be very wary of the Supreme Court Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden would construct were he elected and Progressive-Democrats seize the Senate.

Testing Criteria

The FDA wants to add new Wuhan Virus vaccine testing criteria to emergency use authorization applications—weeks after several pharma companies’ Phase III trials (the last phase requiring substantial data collection before EUA can be requested, the phase whose satisfactory completion is required before general use authorization can be requested) already have begun.

As part of the new guidelines, manufacturers seeking authorization would have to follow trial participants for at least two months after a second vaccine shot.
The new standards would also reportedly ask developers to identify a specific number of severe COVID-19 cases in patients who received a placebo in trials.

These data collection steps would be useful; however, it’s ridiculous to try to make them Critical Items for EUA. The FDA has known the structure of existing tests all along—it approved those tests’ advance into Phase III trials. If the FDA really thought these new “standards” and data collection criteria were important, it would have levied them on the original pharma companies at the time it approved their Phase III trials.

Waiting until this late date to try to add them is suspicious.