The speed of development, production, and distribution is absolutely unprecedented. But to me your argument seems similar to proposing a counterfactual and saying, "see, the Federal government could have done so much worse". Yes, they could have. But what they did do was very much S.O.P. (faux-political handwringing in other contexts notwithstanding), and nobody should be surprised that throwing money (in a way no other country possibly could) at a national emergency didn't completely fail.

In any event, credit for the development and production of the vaccine is due to the pharmaceutical companies. Absolute production capacity was (and remains) structurally constrained. There was plenty of cash globally to finance production; cash only bought you priority in line. (That's why they were so quick to give up patent rights.) Also, for the mRNA vaccines, most of the development was finished mere days after the genome was published. Conversely, the Federal government bears some responsibility for the egregious production errors with the J&J vaccine because of lax oversight, though most of that laxity was rooted in earlier years.

Regarding timelines, here's Anthony Fauci being reported on March 3, 2020 as saying "[T]he whole process is going to take a year, year-and-a-half at least." The article goes on, "Fauci said vaccines are being developed and will soon be ready for testing, but 'I don't want to overpromise.'" https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/03/offi... (To be clear, that's March 3, not May 3.)

The first shipment of Pfizer was mid December. That's over 9 months later than Fauci's statement, yet nearly 3 months earlier than the initial 1 year estimate.[1] But in context that's not much of a discrepancy. And the vaccine wasn't really widely available until later. As someone under 50 I couldn't get my first dose until late April, 2021.

People, including public health officials, were reciting the same "12 to 18 months" refrain for several months after Fauci (and others) gave the original estimate. It had become a talking point; a talking point in a context where health officials were fighting political narratives that were hostile to mandatory masking and shutdowns in favor of doing nothing while we waited for a vaccine. It's disingenuous to go back and criticize people for not decreasing the number after every public hearing and news conference. It's especially disingenuous to do so while failing to recall all the times that Trump and others denied and diminished the risk of the pandemic (including its lethality), and gave optimistic (if not outright misleading) predictions for various initiatives and therapies. Remember, Fauci and others were trying to set expectations amidst a cacophony of self-serving claims, and to do so in a way that maximally preserved the credibility of the health community if things went sideways, as they almost certainly would from their perspective in time.

Health officials made some egregious missteps early on; missteps that squarely reflected poor application of known science and medicine. (Mostly they were reciting old science, but that's their fault all the same.) But using a conservative estimate of 12 months as the earliest date for general vaccine availability is hardly one of them. As far as I'm concerned, for a ballpark estimate (and ballparking it is all anyone could have done), it was spot on.

[1] I remember an early NPR interview with Fauci where he gave a flat 1 year estimate; no 1 - 1 1/2 years. But I don't remember the precise date and am not about to go look it up because it's a pointless dispute. Certainly at the time I remember thinking that he's really pulling a number out of his ass because of the huge amount of uncertainty with everything, but that the way he described the general situation (in terms of details and coherent reasoning, including his understanding of the pharmaceutical industry) made me feel that Fauci's estimate was about as well-grounded as anyone's possibly could be, especially considering that he would have been in direct contact with leadership at Pfizer, Moderna, and other companies. In fact, at that time Fauci likely had a more comprehensive perspective of the situation, especially from a logistical standpoint, than anyone else in the world.