“(where actual dead virus vaccines allow the body to develop antibodies to most all such proteins in one go)”
Vaccine builders created whole virus vaccines for both SARS-1 and MERS, the two closest cousins of the Covid-19 virus.
The vaccines worked when it came to generating antibodies, but when the vaccinated test animals were challenged by exposure to the wild virus they died from vaccine antibody-dependent enhancement, VADE. Which is a reason why that technique wasn’t used for Covid.
As can be seen in the following study even the entire spike protein alone carries the risk of ADE so the vaccines don’t use the entire spike.
“Learning from the past: development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines”:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00462-y
“An ideal antigen should be selected for the development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. The S protein is the major antigen in most COVID-19 vaccine candidates under development as it contains the major neutralizing epitopes and is located on the surface of the viral particle. However, the full-length S protein of SARS-CoV also contains several immunodominant sites that can induce non-neutralizing antibodies, including those associated with ADE, or harmful immune responses”
Did they make a dead virus vaccine or an mRNA “vaccine”?
I was under the impression it was mRNA.