1) The FDA sets the rules, even in a pandemic, not Pfizer - and this is good. It's pointless to test a vaccine if the result are not valid for Black people. Thi

1) The FDA sets the rules, even in a pandemic, not Pfizer - and this is good. It's pointless to test a vaccine if the result are not valid for Black people. This is not an example of 'slow government bureaucracy' - this is normal regulatory oversight, akin to 'approval' of the drug in the first place. 2) That they didn't take the money is a second order issue in the context of $4 Trillion hit to the economy with 300 000 dead in the US alone. Pfizer will do whatever is best for their economic outcome. Not taking money because they believe it may have slowed them down is one thing, but not taking it because they'd not make as much profit is another. The profit motivation has obviously distorted early response, to the point that good organized leadership would have required some kind of regulated but open regime for manufacture, with some kind of negotiated price. Why on earth are we only letting Pfizer manufacture it? The answer is 'free markets' - except they are obviously dysfunctional at the moment. A better answer would be some kind of 'Open IP' agreement whereby an established royalty would be set for the vaccine, and basically anyone can make it. We already have government established rates for every single natural resource, and we have controlled rates for energy as well - this is not a new idea. Also - the government could provide 'infinite credit' for approved pre-production of select vaccines by select manufacturers at a set price, thereby encouraging mass-manufacturing of vaccine candidates even if the candidate failed. i.e. socialize the risk. Its counter-intuitive but only in a regular market based context. The math shows how that's upside down though, the ROI is much, much higher with intervention. Now - if the government has is literally incompetent in every operating capacity, that's another storey, but what I have described here is not 'government manufacture', but rather, a different kind of market-based solution, with a different incentive structure.