This is consistent with the scenario in which the vaccine trials did not lead to the desired outcome ("the pandemic will be cured by the vaccine"), and so insti

This is consistent with the scenario in which the vaccine trials did not lead to the desired outcome ("the pandemic will be cured by the vaccine"), and so institutional powers tried to dress it up as a success. Note that the researchers and authors of this paper do not need to be involved for this to be true. They simply publish a factual result, but it is somehow deformed/ignored during the course of public service campaigns. "Vaccine lowers severity of symptoms" becomes "vaccines work". More speculatively, with this in mind, it is troubling to think of how the vaccine safety trials may have been interpreted, and why major pharmaceutical companies insisted upon total civil immunity.