We got what's needed for COVID-19 vaccination completely wrong

I think this might be (very slightly) unfair to mRNA vaccines, as the comparison between them and peptide vaccines is pretty situation dependent:

• We have reason to believe that peptide vaccines will work particularly well here, because we're targeting a respiratory infection, and the peptide vaccine delivery mechanism targets respiratory tissue instead of blood.
• That said, mRNA vaccines are expected to elicit much stronger immune responses than peptide vaccines would.
• I suspect that the low efficacy of mRNA vaccines (only 95% - low is relative) is likely because they're only targeting the spike protein, which apparently has 'high mutant escape potential'.  We have a LOT more information about the virus now than we did when the mRNA designs were finalized.  If companies had been allowed to make mRNA vaccine updates without resetting all the clinical trials, I believe we'd have a substantially better/stronger vaccine than just 95%, with a single shot instead of two.
• mRNA vaccines are really just a technology demo at this point; sure, you can make vaccines with the tech, but that's not the real superpower here.  The superpower is that we have a platform we can use to generate arbitrary proteins in live cells, including proteins we know about but for which we have no reasonable delivery mechanism.  Not all proteins/peptides are water soluble, and fewer are able to get through cell walls.
• As a technology demo (and not a simple one at that), it's surprising that companies have as much production capability as they do.  I would expect that capacity to be ramped up substantially in the next few years as we start aggressively making use of mRNA treatments to address a host of issues.

To sum up, my view is that mRNA technology is pretty great and I'm really, really glad someone was able to make use of the disaster that was 2021 to ram through safety and clinical trials. My issue is less with the technology and it's large promise, and more with how vaccine testing and rollout has been botched or unnecessarily slowed down at every level.

Peptide vaccines are easy and fast to both design and construct, while being safe unless you really screw up, and effective as long as designed correctly.  However, they do have rather substantial limitations, and it's just happenstance that they're particularly well suited for the situation.  I could see mRNA vaccines having a much wider berth.

The evidence that the adenovirus-based and mRNA-based vaccines are safe and effective is large-scale trials with tens of thousands of participants.

The evidence that Stöcker's peptide-based vaccine is safe and effective is Stöcker's own testimony that he and a few other people used it, didn't get sick, and have the relevant antibodies. [EDITED to add:] Sorry, "a few" isn't fair because he claims to have done a further experiment with 64 people. ~70 people is definitely better evidence than ~5 people, but I don't see any reason to trust Stöcker enough to be confident that what he says about those ~70 people is actually true.

The evidence that RadVac is safe and effective is a general argument that it should be safe and might be effective, and so far as I can tell nothing else at all.

It might be true that the peptide approach is better, but I'd want to see much better evidence before calling for a "Truth and Reconciliation Committee" to look into the alleged awful misdeeds of the people who promoted other approaches.

The mRNA technology seems to provide no benefit over simply giving the peptides directly but the mRNA researchers really wanted to do fancy research on mRNA.

I think you're giving mRNA vaccines too little credit and peptide-based vaccines too much.* I haven't looked into peptide vaccines much at all but my general impression is that they don't work that well as a class. Hundreds of peptide vaccines have entered the clinic with no approvals (albeit, not all against infectious diseases, many against cancer which is more difficult) — without looking into the details, I couldn't tell you exactly why, but my guess would be lack of efficacy. When you present something to the immune system, it's important that it be in the right shape so that it trains the immune system properly. Peptides, removed from the context of the protein scaffold that they are normally a part of, are very floppy, and there's no guarantee that the conformation a peptide takes will be the same as the conformation it takes in the native protein (more precisely, probably some of the conformations the peptide takes will be similar to the conformations in the native protein, but how many other conformations will the peptide be taking that are dissimilar, and will steer the immune system the wrong way?). A good heuristic is that to have an effective vaccine, you want to present something to the immune system that's "as close to the real thing" as possible. mRNA vaccines, by being compatible with presentation of a full viral protein, allow you to do that. Peptide-based vaccines, less so.

*It's worth noting that mRNA vs. peptide is a bit of a weird distinction, since mRNA is just a delivery mechanism, and so is also compatible with delivering peptides if that's the way you wanted to go.

Peptide vaccines aren't old and boring, they are new and unproven. From a 2014 review 

The vast majority of candidate peptide vaccines are under Phase I (270 studies) and Phase II (224 studies) stage of development.In a total of 452 studies, only 12 studies have progressed to Phase III level of development.Interestingly, all these 12 studies are on therapeutic candidate peptide vaccines indicated for treatment of multiple types of cancers.

AFAICT no peptide vaccine has ever been approved for human use.

So yes, maybe a peptide vaccine could have worked better, but it would have been as much an innovation as the mRNA vaccines.

[this just from googling right now, I'd never heard of peptide vaccines before]

Novavax (non-mRNA) may be more effective on new variants. https://www.biospace.com/article/comparing-covid-19-vaccines-pfizer-biontech-moderna-astrazeneca-oxford-j-and-j-russia-s-sputnik-v/

Here is a specific proposal about the role of sexiness, ie, newness. I don't mean to put a lot of weight on this hypothesis as opposed to the general class, but it is useful to spell out details. Also, I'm not sure what you're saying and I suspect this is about a somewhat different irrationality than you were proposing.

Perhaps governments will not allow drug companies to profit in cash from selling vaccines. But they can still profit in intangible experience. This is most obvious with Moderna and BioNTech, whose existence is predicated on mRNA vaccines working in general and the companies being able to make them in particular. After this is over, they may not have any more net cash, but they will find it easier to raise money and convince regulators, not to mention that they will be more competent. Similarly, AZ and J&J will learn about vector vaccines.

Another technique would be to remove a vial of blood, add covid, keep the blood alive, and wait till it beats the covid. Then reinject blood full of trained immune cells.

Is this a thing? Why not? 

The vaccine by Stoecker is a protein subunit produced by cell culture. It uses cell machinery like ribosomes, and, more importantly, chaperones, which fold the polypeptide correctly, to make it a functional protein (or protein subunit in this case).

Unlike Radvac, which is a mix of peptide strings synthetised chemicaly.

Christian, I don't usually post here anymore, but I am going to reiterate a point I made recently: advocating for a vaccine that isn't adequately tested is coming close to health fraud.

Testing requirements are fairly onerous, but that is for a good reason.