Gadol: Pfizer has definitely had “issues”
This is a typical business case: many (smaller) companies accept government funding for R&D, giving government certain rights in return. Larger companies prefer keeping their IP by paying for R&D and then (gladly) accept government funds for “testing”, “integration” and other activities that presume that product already exists. They do get often paid more than those companies that share IP with the government, but they often leverage their size and relationship with government personnel, who might be interested in joining a board in the future (see your example).
In this case, Pfizer accepted early pre-orders. You can easily get confused by news dis-information. Today, NYT reported the role of US gov – when they switched from dissing Trump for not getting enough vaccines to complaining that developing countries will not have enough vaccines because …. US and other rich countries order too much. Specifically they say – EU ordered 2x over their population; US ordered 4x. US is getting priority shipment because it was
(1) first to pre-pay all major vaccines. EU, etc followed this idea after
(2) paying for R&D for several companies. Canada has a parliamentary inquiry why they paid early for Moderna, but are getting it after US. Answer: clause in funded R&D or/and US executive order
as to your other point, I am not clear why Pfizer did not report preliminary reports before election. Original plan was to wait, I think, for 32 infected, and then, it was switched to 64 and “by the time they looked”, there were 90+. Report that I read was deliberately vague who increased the number, but it sounds more like FDA. Possible that Pfizer was happy to go along as reporting with less results increased risk of getting bad numbers, even if they did not have political motivation.