Using existing vaccine tech isn't the same as developing entirely new technology, which mRNA is and Cuba's vaccine isn't. And the tech Cuba used was developed b

Using existing vaccine tech isn't the same as developing entirely new technology, which mRNA is and Cuba's vaccine isn't. And the tech Cuba used was developed by pharma companies first, too — protein subunit vaccines are well established, used for hepatitis B, tetanus, and others. And if existing tech works well enough — great! Then use it, and don't use the more expensive mRNA ones. Of course, there are benefits to mRNA vaccines, which is why they were deployed first — Moderna had a working vaccine barely over a month after starting work on it, with only the gene sequence of the virus from Chinese labs to work with. All the rest of the time was just testing. Effectively being able to print a vaccine given a gene sequence is extremely useful. And again — the state (aka the United States) does not fully fund research. It provides less than half of funding in a non-banner year, and a fraction in boom years. Cutting funding not only would hurt deployment and development, it would also harm fundamental research.