[aquadrop]

Yes, I was wondering that very much myself. I remember talks about ramping up production preemptively, starting from spring, to have large stock of vaccine available when they are approved. Bill Gates talked about that specifically, taking like first 5 most promising vaccine candidates and starting production ramp up immediately, even risking the possibility they will not be approved and wasting some money. I thought "Finally, some good strategy". Money risked with such an approach would still be minuscule compared to losses due to pandemic and covid relief funding. But looks like that didn't happen, which is just another sign how badly world handled the pandemic. There's an article related to this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SruhzksSgHWSuxm7b/covid-bill...

[bluGill]

Pfizer and moderna were not in the most promising vaccines list. MRNA was too new and untried. I'm not sure why Oxford/az wasn't ramped up more though, they were the ones everyone was waiting for.

[aquadrop]

Moderna received WARP funding though, I think they definitely were on the list of most promising vaccines. There were 6 most promising western vaccines: Biontech, Moderna, J&J, Oxford, Novavax and Sanofi. It was clear they were the ones needing preemptive production. Sanofi didn't play out, but others are doing ok.