Looks like Pfizer waited to release these news after election is called for a candidate
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/business/pfizer-covid-vaccine...
tl;dw
- The unblinded data came in yesterday (Sunday) from an independent group. They were expecting it to come in the third week of November, so this was earlier than expected.
- They did not take money from the current administrations Operation Warp Speed for development (only for distribution), although my understanding is that the government will be buying doses to deliver for free to Americans.
- They needed to have enough people who get infected in order to have meaningful data.
- Check out the video around 6 minutes to see what they say about this point.
- Overall, it seems more like "this was the soonest the science had something meaningful to say".