Just on a geeky scientific level, mRNA vaccine concept is very cool— coaxing our cells to take in small strips of short-lived genetic code that sit in their cytoplasm, that they use to make a viral protein, & which they present on their surface to passerby white blood cells!

But it goes to show how critical *basic* scientific research is. If scientists hadn’t spent decades uncovering the fundamentals of how cells work on the molecular level - even when there was no immediate therapeutic “product” - none of this would be possible.

That’s just science, though. What immediate therapeutic application did Vesalius’ anatomic work have, or Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood, or Virchow’s cell theory? It takes decades or even centuries ...

That’s one reason why the funding of science cannot always be tethered to immediate practical achievements. On the contrary, we need to spend large amounts of public money funding research focused basically on better understanding nature and our universe.