In the context of shutting down significant percentages of economies for months, in the context of the government (in the UK) providing furlough schemes where they pay peoples salaries, in the context of essentially banning most social interaction and the population slowly going a bit mad, what the hell does it matter if we fund some dud vaccines? What does it even matter if some are outright corrupt and do nothing?

It's the worst kind of bike shedding, it's "well we can't do much about the most life changing event since WW2 but we sure can argue about the transparency of contracts!"