GAO-22-105357's $8.0B medical-defense OT figure (FY2019–2021) and GAO-21-501's $7.2B figure (March 2020–March 2021) measure different, overlapping populations — not a restated contradiction

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claim-gao-2022-ot-consortia-breakdown-shows-conventional-categories-not-fringe-physics records that GAO-22-105357 found $8.0 billion obligated to medical-defense OT consortia between FY2019 and FY2021, "primarily for COVID-19 vaccine development." The same report connects the two figures in a footnote — attached not to the $8.0B figure itself (p. 21) but to the report's p. 14 discussion of the COVID-driven FY2020 obligation spike (footnote 23): "In July 2021, we found that from March 2020 through March 2021, DOD obligated $7.2 billion on OTAs awarded to members of a medical defense consortium mostly for vaccine development and manufacturing. For more information on COVID-19 OTAs awarded to consortia, see GAO-21-501."

The two figures describe overlapping but non-identical populations. The $8.0B figure spans three full fiscal years (FY2019–2021); the $7.2B figure spans roughly one year (March 2020–March 2021) and comes from a separate, earlier GAO product (GAO-21-501, July 2021), not independently read in this vault. A reader encountering both numbers without the footnote connecting them could reasonably take them as conflicting restatements of the same fact; GAO-22-105357's own text resolves the apparent tension by naming the different window and the different report each figure comes from.