It's not strange to have more than one version of a vaccine but it is strange to have so many. Part of the reason we have so many is there was a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but mostly it's because it's a novel virus that needed to be responded to in rapid time. There was no reason to believe that Novavax would work any better than AstraZeneca's vaccine before anyone started the trials, and by the time we had results from human trials there were already over a hundred vaccine candidates in the pipeline.
Right now there's 41 vaccines in phase 1, 17 in phase 2, 13 in phase 3 and 7 in the same stage as Pfizer. There will be a question for some the vaccines in phase 1 whether it's worth moving ahead with the more expensive human trials, now that we know highly effective vaccines arlready exist. All 30 of the companies that are currently in phase 2 and 3 currently didn't know that and until the results were collected and published, there was no reason to believe anyone else's vaccine was better than theirs.
So then it gets onto the question of what does it mean to be better? The main thing they're being judged upon is their efficacy in preventing severe symptoms. That's what the regulators instructed them to focus on and that's what the headline figures have been reporting. We know Pfizer and Moderna are really good at that, Astra Zeneca are also good but it's not clear how good just yet.
Next they're being judged upon their ability to prevent all symptoms, and ideally prevent infection. All companies have tested people if they report symptoms, so we should capture the majority of that first part, but few companies (Astra Zeneca being one) have tested people irrespective of symptoms. Doing regular PCR tests is resource-intensive and as it wasn't required by the regulators to secure approval, most companies have went with the approach of testing for antibodies a few months down the line to check how much it prevents infection.
Somewhere in between those two aspects is the most important remaining practical question: how much does it prevent transmission of the virus? If you aren't infected you can't transmit it, but even if you are infected it is known that some people are less infectious than others. Generally it's thought that asymptomatic transmission is lower than symptomatic transmission, so if these vaccines are highly effective at limiting the symptoms then they will limit transmission. But I don't think anyone has reported any figures on that. Just vague, generally positive statements.
Then the final medical assessment is about its safety profile. What side effects do they have, do they particularly effect some groups more than others, etc. Then you move onto practical considerations like: how much does it cost, how easily is it manufactured, what is the current production capacity, what are the storage and distribution requirements, how many doses are required.
In some senses we know more about those practical considerations than the medical ones. Even after huge trials we still don't know which is the "best" vaccine because it depends on how much weight you apply to each of those medical factors, and because we don't have data for some of those medical factors. That's mostly due to the pace of development but generally it's completely normal to have multiple treatments for a particular disease. If you want to avoid getting malaria for example, you're given a few
choices and advised on how effective they are, how suitable they are for someone with your demographic and medical profile, what side effects come with them and how much they cost. You can get the doctor to recommend one but ultimately you can choose one of them.
All of that isn't because pharma companies are greedy but because developing medicine is hard. It's very rare you find something that not only prevents disease but prevents infection, comes with no notable side effects, is equally safe for all people, is easily and cheaply manufactured and stored, and can be done in a single dose.
Vaccines are the best method we've ever invented that do fit most of those medical criteria: they're much safer than most medical treatments, and they're much more effective. Primarily that's because they're forced to go through these massive trials to ensure both of those things. However many vaccines that we develop don't do so well on the practical side of things, at least on the first iteration. They can be hard to manufacture, difficult to transport and store, or impossible to do in just one dose. Which is why even for diseases that we have highly effective vaccines for, decade after decade some companies try to develop new ones that are more practical, while some aim for fewer side effects or increased efficacy.
That's the stage that Novavax and others are at right now. Just because one exists already that does exceptionally well on at least one of those dimensions doesn't mean that it will be better than theirs on all dimensions, and on at least one dimension Novavax is theoretically better: it is adminstered as a single dose. Other vaccines coming down the pipeline might be far better at reducing transmission than any of the current ones. Some existing manufacturing plants are able to create some kinds of vaccines and not others, so even if we re-focused all of our efforts on just Pfizer, we wouldn't be using the maximum production capacity overall and the growth in Pfizer production wouldn't balance that out. Lots of other reasons too.
So essentially no, it's not all driven by greed. They've worked exceptionally quickly and effectively so far and criticising them for how they've gone about things is a bit unfair at this point. Profit motivated them to develop the vaccines but there are many legitimate reasons to continue developing the vaccines.