The Cost of Covid Vaccine Politics?

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was designed to be available at low cost and, unlike its mRNA alternatives, to be cheaply transportable/capable of being stored in standard refridgerators. These characteristics, one might think, made the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine a suitable candidate for rolling out world-wide. Professor John Bell (Oxford University) suggests, however, that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was reputationally damaged by the 'bad behaviour' of some scientists and politicians. This reduced its use, when vaccines were urgently needed (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/07/doubts-cast-over-astrazeneca-jab-probably-killed-thousands-covid-vaccine). Marketing the Oxford/AstraZeneca product as a 'British vaccine' at the time of Brexit may not have been helpful. This was a political choice. The vaccine was initially linked to reports of very rare blood clots (occurring in about 1 in 65,000 cases but being slightly more common in younger people). The UK government, consequently, initially limiting the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to their over 45s. Arguments about the numbers of older patients in trials, also led to some EU countries failing to approve this vaccine for their over 65's. There were also spats, around the distribution of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe. Bell (who was one of the people who worked on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine), clearly feels that this politicking had dire consequences for the initial vaccine roll-out. He goes as far as to say that the bad behaviour "probably killed hundreds of thousands of people". Perhaps, it is still doing so? None of the fuss would have helped vaccine hesitant folk to make an informed decision.