WH Insider Sets the Record Straight about Operation Warp Speed to Cure the Coronavirus
Q4 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Operation Warp Speed
Casey B. Mulligan sat at the table with President Trump as Chief Economic Adviser to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) 2018-19, and now he’s setting the record straight on “Operation Warp Speed,” which the Trump administration put in place to expedite the development of vaccines for the coronavirus.
"President Trump and his administration not only knew why FDA approval barriers needed to be removed, but knew from prior experience how to do it. By the end of that calendar year, two vaccines were approved, produced, and beginning to be delivered to the American population," says Mulligan.
In a hard-hitting essay titled How Economics is Helping End the Coronavirus published in the National Review last year, Mulligan revealed that Dr. Fauci was not up to speed on the planning the administration was already putting in motion.
No Vaccine For 18 Months
“When Dr. Fauci publicly stated that there would be ‘no vaccine for 18 months,’ he was overlooking the work that the president had already done - with me and my White House colleagues, who were keeping Dr. Fauci in the loop.”
According to Mulligan, who is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, the plans for accelerating vaccine development were shared in 2019. “President Trump's first step in this direction was actually in 2017 when he appointed Scott Gottlieb, a critic of FDA delays, to head the department. And I was in the Oval Office this February when the president promised that he knew how to further streamline the FDA.”
Debate over excessive FDA regulations that impede the development and delivery of life-saving drugs, is nothing new. “Long ago a wide range of economists had concluded that the FDA process was too cumbersome,” wrote Mulligan. “In 1973, the University of Chicago’s Sam Peltzman concluded that the FDA cure was worse than the disease.”
See Mulligan’s Opinion piece in Newsweek from July 28, 2020, Operation Warp Speed: What a Deal!.
His new book is You’re Hired! Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President (Republic Book Publishers).
