Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months.

Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months...

Meanwhile other countries including China and Russia didn’t approve their own vaccines faster, seeming to indicate the timeline had little to do with U.S. politics.

Both Russia and China started using their vaccines in August 2020:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-claims-first-corona...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...

As your article notes, Russia was similar to allowing people to join the phase 3 trial. It was not a widespread deployment of vaccines and was not analogous to the EUA for Pfizer and moderna. “In effect, Russia will be conducting its Phase 3 trials live, treating it more as a demonstrator group than a control group meant to ensure there is nothing dangerous awaiting the larger population.

The first two phases involved just a few dozen volunteers.

Phase 3 trials will be conducted not only in Russia but in partner countries including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Dmitriev said in Tuesday's statement.”

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_V_COVID-19_vaccine#Aut... the first authorizations outside Russia occurred in December 2020.

Similarly for the Chinese vaccine it took time for the trial results to arrive. Sinovac was approved for general use in February 2021, months after the FDA had authorized Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3120855/covi...

Aren't their vaccines significantly less effective than Moderna, Pfizer, etc.? In that case, I'm not sure we should let their earlier release reflect negatively on those that took longer to be ready. On the contrary, maybe we should instead consider the possibility that the Russian and Chinese vaccines were rushed.

It is worth considering that maybe Sinovac (and whatever the Russian one(s) is/are called) may have been released far earlier than they would have been if the U.S. and others had not developed their own faster. Think of space wars - even if you lose the race to first, you still want to be in 2nd vs 500th. If they were developed at a more traditional pace, would they be more effective? Would any of them be? And what would be the consequences of waiting? Would it be millions more deaths, or would natural herd immunity emerge? Both? Would the more virulent variants have appeared without a marginally effective strain evolving as a result of marginally effective vaccines?

The alpha variant (B117) emerged in the UK in November 2020, there’s no indication it had anything to do with vaccines. The delta variant (B.1.617) was detected in India in October 2020. So saying the vaccines caused these variants to evolve would suggest that vaccination also has a time-travel component?