I'm a software engineer and I've done similar Operation Warp speeds in the past.
Mandates from executives to ship something now. Disable the test suite because we don't have time to look at the tests. Skip QA, release directly to prod and see what happens.
It always works very well in the IT industry, it's not wonder pharma wants to adopt the same proven approach.
They did not skip QA. The EMA (the European FDA equivalent) did not reduce the formal requirements for Covid vaccines compared to other vaccines. None of the Covid vaccines have an emergency use authorization in the EU. They all went through the regular process. That process was made more parallel and more incremental. And it was obviously executed with the highest priority possible.
Those ideas are indeed used in the IT world, but they are successful ideas, and they are much older than the IT world. By incremental I mean, the rolling review used for the trials. I.e. the pharma companies would deliver regularly preliminary versions of the final report on the trial. Thereby, a lot of questions about the report can be asked and answered earlier than in a traditional review process after the trial has finished.
They are not necessarily wrong.
(This is an anonymous account so I'll state my qualifications: none regarding medical stuff)
I think coronaviruses we knew before were not immunizing either, which is why people catch the cold over and over (I catch it every year, sometimes twice a year).
What's wrong is pushing simultaneously the view that natural immunity is not very effective against SARS-CoV-2, but that vaccines somehow are, which is indeed a disingenuous proposition on its face.
Mandates from executives to ship something now. Disable the test suite because we don't have time to look at the tests. Skip QA, release directly to prod and see what happens.
It always works very well in the IT industry, it's not wonder pharma wants to adopt the same proven approach.