I agree with Drs. Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan that the FDA is capable of performing a competent review of Covid-19 vaccines, but they fail to mention a workaround in federal law (U.S. Code, Title 21, Chapter 9) that could obviate the need for FDA approval or input ("You Can Trust the FDA's Vaccine Process," op-ed, Sept. 21). It specifies that the secretary of Health and Human Services may issue an authorization for emergency use of a drug or vaccine if "after consultation with the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . . . the Secretary concludes (1) that an agent referred to in a declaration under subsection (b) can cause a serious or life-threatening disease or condition; (2) that, based on the totality of scientific evidence available to the Secretary, including data from adequate and well-controlled clinical trials, if available, it is reasonable to believe that (A) the product may be effective."

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There is widespread anticipation of the availability of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infections so that Americans can get their lives back to some semblance of normal. Some four dozen vaccines, made with a variety of technology platforms, are now in clinical trials; nine are in large-scale safety/efficacy testing. Several of the more promising development programs have been accelerated by a White House crash program, "Operation Warp Speed," which was launched in May.

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Public health policy should be guided by science, data and a large dose of common sense. The promised benefits of any policy should be weighed against the known risks and possibility of unintended consequences.

Last February, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would ban the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., did not advance in the Senate, but is sure to rear its draconian head in the next Congress.

The prohibition of the legal sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults is not supported by science, is undermined by an analysis of the available data, and lacks common sense.

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During the years I've been writing about bees, there has been a litany of supposed catastrophes widely trumpeted in the press, only to be revealed a short time later to be wholly fictitious. In no case have problems been connected to the state-of-the-art neonicotinoid insecticides that activists like to single out as the culprit.

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Recently, we co-authored an article about the thorny issues surrounding who would get access to the earliest doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. As we discussed, there are many possible options for setting priorities in terms of who should be vaccinated first. One obvious solution one would be to prioritize the people who are instrumental in mitigating the pandemic, with front-line medical personnel and staff at long-term care facilities going to the head of the line. Another strategy would be to consider "most vulnerable" populations first—those with comorbidities, or over sixty years of age. Or how about those involved in keeping the food supply chain intact, such as farmworkers, truck drivers, and food-store workers? Or how about trying to identify people prone to becoming "super-spreaders" of the virus, an approach to vaccination that has been successful for other pathogens? (For example, it was found that when children were given the pneumococcal vaccine in the early 2000s, rates of bacterial pneumonia in the elderly rapidly dropped because of a "herd effect.") And how much influence should political considerations have: should Americans automatically receive higher priority, simply because our government subsidized the development of the vaccine?

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