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...