I am reminded of the movie "Terminator 3" which is not a great movie. Major plot point -- Government computer networks seem plagued by a computer virus and the US government panics and releases an experimental anti-virus program called Skynet out into the whole Internet into order to solve the problem. Whoops! Skynet IS the virus. And it becomes self-aware shortly after.
Sci-Fi, of course. But the concept that the vaccines ARE the variants has some validity.
There’s been a doctor or three that said that vaccinating in the middle of a pandemic will force the virus to mutate in an unnatural way. The vax might nudge it to mutate in a different way then if there was no vax. The question they were left with is, could it nudge it to become deadlier?
Cloning — bad idea
Messing around with DNA — bad idea
creating viruses with gain of function — bad idea
mass vaxxing during a pandemic — unknown