With the amount of backtracking any of this “we believe we totally did nothing wrong and you shouldn’t look too closely at us, ok?” Just really doesn’t sit well with me. What about the same “we believe” claims on transmission? Efficacy? Safety? Lots of modifying after the fact and “oops, sorry!”
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
> Lots of modifying after the fact and “oops, sorry!”
Nah, none of that happened and when it did it was natural and didn't imply any mistakes. If you're going to misunderstand research, it's better not to think about it in the first place.
(Example: efficacy of a vaccine always appears highest when noone's gotten the vaccine yet. This is a base rate effect.)
Of course, there were some other less effective vaccines in poor deprived countries like China and England, but we can't do much about that.
[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.19.517879v1