Reuters reported yesterday that Operation Warp Speed's chief science adviser, Moncef Slaoui, is advocating for a plan to cut the dose of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine to spread it more thinly around the country and to more people. Providing half the dose provides just as much protection, Slaoui says.
Now, I was skeptical of Slaoui's assertion given that he's been wrong about everything else so far, but I'm not a scientist and you could credibly say that I don't know shit.
The Food and Drug Administration is staffed by actual scientists, however, and the agency release a statement saying there's no scientific proof that half of a vaccine would be just as effective.
“We want to remind the public about the importance of receiving COVID-19 vaccines according to how they’ve been authorized by the FDA in order to safely receive the level of protection observed in the large randomized trials supporting their effectiveness,” the agency said in a statement posted to its website on Monday night. [...]
Slaoui suggested on Sunday that Moderna’s clinical trial data revealed that people between the ages of 18 and 55 who received two 50-microgram doses showed an “identical immune response” to the two required 100-microgram doses.
But the FDA’s statement a day later criticized Slaoui’s assertion as too hasty given a lack of available evidence to justify hollowing out the doses.
If the federal government has no evidence that half of a vaccine would be just as effective, who or what was Slaoui quoting from when he claimed that? Moderna has made no such claims.
There have been many times over the past four years when it appeared that Trump's habit of making up fantastical bullshit was just as contagious as the coronavirus is; as if anyone who comes into close contact with Trump develops a similar habit of making shit up.
Slaoui is ostensibly a scientist with a PhD in molecular biology. Other members of Trump's regime have been deceptively educated as well, but at the end of the day they've all said things just because it sounds good.
Further study may actually prove that a smaller dose of the vaccine can be effective, but even the average person (much a less an actual scientist) knows you can't state that as a fact without evidence.