No they should not make recommendations to the public, because they aren't a public agency - they have a conflict of interest. It's like a hedge fund manager giving public advice on stock picks.
They are not giving advice or recommendations, they are reporting the results of a study.
That's the beauty of a good scientific study: you do not have to trust the author. In fact don't, the more people try to find errors the better.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea...
I think people are "acting like" it's scientific data about a vaccine of interest to the public.
Are you suggesting the data is unreliable or falsified? If so, and you have a basis for that, please cite.
Otherwise, it's difficult to understand why you're implying people shouldn't be interested in this information.
Why should they lie? If their data had something different to their press release, lying and then getting caught (e.g. by a whistleblower) would damage their reputation. If their data shows it's bad, as responsible scientists why shouldn't they come out with the truth to protect the general public, and say "We'll continue work on the Omicron-specific vaccine.".
Unless you think their main motive is to boost their stock price in the short term. That kind of thinking should be reserved for people dealing with the blockhain-ponzi schemes.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summ...
[2] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/04/06/meet-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical...
Phizer holds single largest criminal fine in human history at 1.3$ Billion USD (to my knowledge). They have many reasons to lie; while I'm not suggesting they are (I have no idea how I would determine truth from falsehood in the realm of scientific information) it's quite ignorant to make the statement "Why would they lie". They would lie because it's something innate to humans and Phizer is no exception. They stand to make ludicrous amounts of money if boosters become mandated - now boosters may ultimately be the best option for the protection of human life! But this doesn't mean we shouldn't be incredibly skeptical of every word that comes from this organization.
While I am fully vaccinated (ironically with 2x Phizer), I am and will remain hesitant at accepting information provided by pharmaceutical companies at face value until the day I'm dead.
Not to say they did commit any such errors here. Perhaps all such studies conducted by Pfizer are truly earnest and valid/replicable, I certainly hope they are. But it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of an organization publishing new science when that organization stands to profit greatly from the results. You may call that libertarian (though I'm frankly not sure how), I'd call it just due diligence.
Whether or not that's better off for the person on the receiving end is often entirely orthogonal to the entire arrangement.
See: The Tobacco Industry The Dairy Industry pre-FDA The Sugar Industry The Media Industry Some corners of the Supplement industry
Also see: Lobbying and Psychological anchoring
You, in fact, picked the absolute group of people to prove the virtue of taking someone at their word. Go look for the old Thalidomide adverts, then go read the rest of the history of it.
Point being: always consider the source, and incentives. There is always an angle.
We have (some) laws regulating what advertisers can say. Putting out a press releases like this is, in effect, an advertisement. It sways public opinion and will effect their profits.
And did you know the US is the only country where it is legal for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their medications to the public?
And did you know the pharmaceutical companies are the main source of revenue for the FDA, the agency that approves their drugs?
Why not? Stock picking is their job. Given that logic, a teacher shouldn't tell people how to teach their kid to read, and a plumber shouldn't tell people how to change a faucet.
Yes, that's technically fraud/market manipulation. That@s why most hedge fund managers won@t give financial advice until after they've been paid, and are, at best, either selling the money management angle with all the right regulatory and compliance check marks ticked, or they're selling you fast access to market actors + quantitative fiscal analysis results.
Either way, I wouldn't advise necessarily blindly taking one's advice. Just because you "do it as your job" doesn't mean you're necessarily terribly good at it. Never mind the whole "completely punting on your own responsibility as a capital allocator" thing.
Remember, everybody punting to hedge funds and such is the reason the economy overtime has trended toward centralization. Once everybody knows the guy managing everyone else's money, it's only a matter of time til the information engineering starts.
The hedge fund manager has access to billions in managed capital. If he can advertise positions to the public, and the public takes his advice; he can manipulate his billions of dollars vs the known positions he gives out to hedge his own positions.
This is a 5 years olds description of how this works.