@crazy4life,
Maybe we need to be clearer in what we are talking about. The vaccine for children was approved after clinical trials. In the newer post above, you are addressing the bivalent vaccines. These vaccines have minor changes to the mRNA and thus it appears that they will be allowed to be used via EUA, as there does not seem to be an impact on the safety of the virus because the manufacturing process is identical, minus the small amount of genetic material that is tailored to the new variant. (Thanks for posting the above article links!)
The approval of the Alzheimer’s drug is an interesting one. Twenty years ago, this drug would not likely have been approved based on the effectiveness data. However, the pendulum has shifted, and the needs of patients have a much higher role than in the past. If you, or your family, have a devastating illness, and there are no other drugs available to treat the illness, do you want to have access to a medication that may (or may not) help? Interestingly, FDA use to routinely get criticized for not making these the types of drugs available to patients in need.
I have not read any news accounts that either Gruber or Krause left the Agency because of any actions that occurred at FDA during the vaccine review process. Gruber and Krause, according to news reports, left the Agency because of anger over the FDA's lack of autonomy in booster planning. So, please, let us not confuse their actions as a rebellion against the vaccine approval process. There seems to also be some concern that many of the recent FDA Commissioners have gone to big pharma leaving the FDA. I will just note that FDA Commissioners are political appointees appointed by the President, and seldom serve more than 3 - 4 year terms. The FDA Center Directors for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) and the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) are not political appointees and are long term civil servants. It is these Directors who give the final Agency approval for new vaccines (CBER) and new drugs (CDER). (I do believe, however, that an Emergency Use Authorization is signed off by the FDA Commissioner.)
We could always talk about sometime fun, like the life cycle approach to process validation.
Jim