No, this is simply the next step in vaccine development and it's been researched, studied, and tested for over a decade. Moderna was founded over 10 years ago with the sole purpose of creating vaccines on the mRNA platform. Other biotech companies have been working on the mRNA platform even longer.
Gen 1 vaccines used killed or weakened versions of the pathogen. They had a high risk associated with mistakes in the killing/weakening process that sometimes caused people to become infected. e.g. the Cutter incident. Gen 2 vaccines take the part of the pathogen the body reacts to and puts it on something that isn't dangerous, such as another virus. These are slow to create and carry allergy risks. Gen 3 vaccines are the mRNA platform. There's no allergy risk. There's no risk of live pathogen causing infection. They're faster to create, faster to produce, and theoretically can be much cheaper once the manufacturing becomes more common.
"I think the risk of taking the vaccine vastly outweighs the risks of contracting the Chinese Bioweapon."
What specific risk, exactly? The only components in the mRNA vaccines are a lipid (fat) shell, which disappears when it encounters a cell or will be broken down over the course of a few days, and the messenger RNA inside. The mRNA can only interact with a ribosome and the only thing that does is cause the ribosome to build the surface glycoprotein for SARS-CoV-2. It's harmless by itself, but the immune system recognizes it as foreign and the resulting response is what builds lasting immunity. That mRNA breaks down naturally within the cells within hours or days.
In less than a week, there's nothing left of the vaccine in your body. The only way you'd ever know somebody had the thing is by checking for antibodies, and that testing wouldn't be able to distinguish between having the vaccine or having COVID-19. So what risks - specifically - are we talking about here? Testing? Just between the US and the UK, Pfizer and Moderna have spent months testing their respective vaccines on over 100,000 closely monitored volunteers. The Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 clinical trials done are exactly the same trials done for EVERY drug and vaccine.
Why are we suddenly to believe that the testing we do for everything on the market is suddenly insufficient? Why are we suddenly supposed to buy into fear with zero basis? I don't live in fear; I study facts and make informed decisions. The risks here are a headache and a fever for the vaccine or a 3% chance of landing in the ICU and 0.65% chance of death for the virus. I'll take the headache and fever, please.
Do we have any mRNA based vaccines on the market currently?
No one knows if antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) or enhanced respiratory disease (ERD) will occur in patients in the future, when challenged with a new viral variation. In other words, a worsening of disease possibly resulting in death. An adjuvant is being included in the vaccine to, hopefully, minimize the possibility, but the risk is unclear. One thing known for sure: The dead lab animal victims in earlier studies have no opinion on this.