making vaccines

There are vaccines that use this methodology, they're called sub-unit vaccines (i.e. only a certain fragment, antigen, of the pathogen is presented to the immune system). This makes the vaccine safer as there's no chance of reversion to virulence as is seen in live-attenuated vaccines. Like the mRNA vaccines, though, they require adjuvants and booster doses since the generated immune response is weaker. There probably is labs working on subunit COVID-19 vaccines; and a subunit vaccine would still likely work perfectly well. However, there are a couple of logistical reasons why RNA vaccines have emerged as the most promising candidates.

So they seem similar, but the reason for choosing an mRNA vaccine model was most likely due to easier manufacturing process. When the pandemic hit, as you would expect, there were many groups working on sequencing the genome of SARS-CoV-2. This meant the full sequenced genome was readily available very quickly. If you have the genome, then it's actually relatively quick and inexpensive to generate RNA vaccines. Subunit vaccines involve growing the pathogen (or expressing the protein/antigen of interest in another system) and then isolating the antigen you're interested in - which definitely requires more time, effort and money. They're actually looking at potentially using RNA vaccine technology in flu vaccines. As you may know, flu vaccines are synthesised using forecasted (predicted) strains - which isn't always accurate. Current flu vaccines take about 5/6 months to develop so there's very little that can be done if a more virulent strain does emerge. RNA vaccines can be synthesised much quicker (~2/3 months), meaning they could be produced in response to emerging strains.

Since we are in a pretty wretched situation right now, the faster and cheaper the better!

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this is exactly all I needed. Thank you so much!