Unforced Error
AstraZeneca shot itself in the foot with an unforced error in reporting COVID vaccine data to health authorities. It apparently cherry-picked results to make its vaccine look more effective than it is. The National Institutes of Health came down hard and publicly on the company. It created a breech of trust that will be hard to overcome even though the company promises full results by tomorrow. The question remains why AstraZeneca in a pandemic environment would choose to fudge results. Did they think they could get away with it? Was it just a dumb mistake? Any way one chooses to interpret the botch, AstraZeneca doesn’t come off well. It is a PR crisis for the company. Its executives must make sure the next data release is meticulously correct, even conservative to avoid another blowup. One dumb error was one too many.
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