The progress of the vaccine has been incredible compared to usual, but that doesn't mean more could have been done. Every death is a tragedy.
People are constantly used as guinea pigs... as long as there is informed consent as per the Nuremberg code it's fine. Not suggesting anybody would be forced or ill-informed.
So back to my argument - you can make a reasonable guess at estimating P(death|vaccine) vs. P(death|covid) and set a big margin, then offer people to VOLUNTARILY agree to take it who are most at risk of dying.
The average age of death in the UK is 82 mostly with co-morbidities. I am sure many of these dead would have been happy to take the chance.
And in the case of the mRNA vaccines this not some trivial difference - some were developed within weeks/months, but took nearly a year longer to pass all testing.
It's really obvious that pandemics need different handling than the 'lock down and loads of people die anyway, both from the virus and the consequences of lockdown while ruining the economy + wait 2yrs for a vaccine to be fully distributed' approach we've got.
I hope lessons are learned from covid (I'm actually optimistic they will be, in countries other than the one where the virus emerged anyway).