The UK was unusually aggressive in getting everything in place to roll out this vaccine early - not just the approval process, but other logistics as well. The

The UK was unusually aggressive in getting everything in place to roll out this vaccine early - not just the approval process, but other logistics as well. The FDA, on the other hand, was under pressure to delay approval for partisan election-related reasons; the press created the perception that approving the vaccine early would be an evil plot by Trump to win the election. If the trials had reached enough cases to return results earlier, the difference could've been really dramatic because those delaying tactics essentially imposed a minimum length of time the trial had to run for in a slightly stupid way.