Doctor’s campaign to stop vaccine being rushed through before Election Day

It's interesting to think that they may have died by the sword on which they lived (almost not even a metaphor). The article suggests that this was successful in part because the administration had politicized so much science before then, on a wide variety of issues. That gave this prominent doctor leverage to push against this one particular bit of politicized science.

I'm pretty sure any administration would have tried to force a good-news October Surprise by pushing for early approval. After all, it did turn out that the vaccines were safe and effective. They would have had access to both theory suggesting that it should be, and early data affirming that. We can say in retrospect that it would have been fine.

The right charismatic leader could even be seen as having taken a bold step and been a hero. Or at least gotten reelected (since there wouldn't have been supplies and that is busy making people mad now, but that takes a while to show up).

Instead, the science community was motivated to force them to follow the rules. And while we can't prove anything about a counterfactual, the election was close enough that a good October surprise could have turned it. (Which they couldn't have known at the time they wrote this article, two weeks before the election.)