Again? AstraZeneca faces vaccine PR problems as regulators push back on data and pundits shake their heads

Epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding wrote “This is wild” in the first of his series of tweets explaining the back and forth between AZ and NIH. Just what did he mean by “wild,” someone asked? His answer: “This sort of thing never happens.” Eric Topol, Medscape editor-in-chief and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute said it was unprecedented for a DSMB “calling out a company about their data being incorrect.” Even President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci called it an “unforced error” on AstraZeneca’s part. “It really is unfortunate that this happened,” he said in an interview on Good Morning America Tuesday. “It was not necessary—if you look at it, the data really are quite good, but when they put it into the press release it wasn’t completely accurate,” he added.