When I was a young boy, my ambition was to grow up and become a “scientist”. I didn't really have a firm idea what that meant. I had no idea what particular branch of science to focus on or even whether a white lab coat was a de rigueur accessory or just a fashion choice. But I knew that’s what I wanted to be.
My editor asked me to look into it, and after a few hours of reading up about serological testing, my opinion was that the test the company was offering was not useful if you were trying to stop the spread of Covid-19. The positive result would only appear perhaps weeks after you had been infected, by which time you would have spread the virus onwards.
Vaccines work by introducing a similar or weakened pathogen to the body, and your immune system learns how to react to it. It’s like when you train an army to fight by giving them dummy targets to practice on. The difference with mRNA vaccines is that instead of sending in dummy targets, you send blueprints instead and your body uses these blueprints to manufacture its own dummy targets. This works because the role of mRNA is to act as instructions for protein manufacture.
Added to that, once you know what the RNA you want looks like, it should be faster and easier to manufacture than a conventional vaccine. The truth is, the whole field of vaccines is held back not by the limits of science but rather because most pharmaceutical companies don’t believe there is a market for them. Many see them as loss leaders – products you put on the shelves to get your good name out even as they lose you money.