> These companies were also granted liability waivers for these vaccines (and are making record profits from them). They should not get to preserve any "trade secrets."
You are welcome to convince Congress to retroactively change the rules based on which the firms invested in the research (and then to have the government try to convince the Courts that that change is not a taking under the 5th Amendment), but FDA has to comply with the law as it exists, not your fantasy of what the law should be.
Yet Pfizer et al got their fantasy and nobody blinks an eye?
Pfizer, Moderna, and Biontech were recently reported as making $1000 per second from the vaccines. Fuck their "trade secrets." Protect the privacy of individuals, but these companies were not given special exemptions so they could make bank, and should not expect business as usual.
These vaccines are the product of tax dollars and abeyance of the laws, every cent of profit in excess of time and material should be going back to the US government. Pandemics shouldn't be winning lottery tickets - that's an obscene incentive for an industry already known for its blackhearted exploitation of human misery. "But muh rules" is already out the window. These companies already have the means to create pandemics, let's not set the precedent that worldwide plagues are great for the bottom line.
If you want solutions, and you have capitalism, there isn't much choice. I’m perfectly fine with dismantling capitalism, but that's not really the role of the court adjudicating an FOIA case.
> "But muh rules" is already out the window.
No, the rule of law and Constitutional guarantees against arbitrary deprivation of liberty and property are not out the window.
I get that some people in this thread desperately want them to be, though.
You are welcome to convince Congress to retroactively change the rules based on which the firms invested in the research (and then to have the government try to convince the Courts that that change is not a taking under the 5th Amendment), but FDA has to comply with the law as it exists, not your fantasy of what the law should be.