The Warp Speed Project in the Pandemic

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In 2018, I was working in the White House Council of Economic Advisors. The idea we didn't call it Warp Speed back then, but the idea is, well, in the pandemic, there are different trade-offs between speed and efficacy. It makes no sense to wait three years to have the super effective vaccine versus having one that's kind of effective right away. We concluded more on the economic side that the regulatory hurdles must be different and lower.

When there's no vaccine on the market, people will look for other ways to be safe, including school closures and the handwashing of groceries. Listen as economist Casey Mulligan of the University Chicago talks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the costs of delaying a vaccine, the hidden costs of FDA regulation, and what we learned and failed to learn about the Covid pandemic.