The US is doing something similar with vaccine candidates. Kickstarting massive production before the trials complete so that if it works the doses are ready to

The US is doing something similar with vaccine candidates. Kickstarting massive production before the trials complete so that if it works the doses are ready to go. BARDA is awarding grants like $483 million to Moderna to start manufacturing even if the vaccine is never approved. It may be totally appropriate for the government to make multi-billion dollar speculative investments in therapies that could help us more quickly restart the economy, the closing of which is costing trillions of dollars. These investments, like all central planning approaches, will distort the free market and likely cause a misallocation of resources. For example more work on COVID therapies at the expense of cancer therapies which could ultimately lead to more deaths overall. But the cost of the shutdown dwarfs all of that, so basically anything that could expedite full reopening is worth the risk. When disaster preparedness pays off everyone feels great. When disaster preparedness that doesn’t pay off is ridiculed as wasted investment, we get situations like we had with the National Stockpile, and what happened in CA with their disbanded disaster response field hospitals. We need to accept the government wasting money in disaster preparedness if we want to ever actually be prepared. Otherwise it’s like complaining about the insurance premium because the house didn’t burn down.