Shrug. Such things do happen. The history of development of mRNA crosses decades, with many wrong turns. The final tweaks needed to make it work did happen not long before COVID happened on the scene, but as COVID had not been heard of at the time I can't see how that could be have been artificially orchestrated. The mRNA developers did get extraordinarily lucky when a pandemic generate a healthy return on their decades of investment just as it became viable. Having read the history of mRNA, I don't begrudge them their luck. Individuals invested huge amounts of time, took large personal risks (to the extend of being fired for their persistence) in making it happen. Such efforts usually aren't rewarded.
> i vehemently disagree that further testing would have been redundant.
There was one recorded death to due mRNA COVID vaccines in Australia. Nearly everyone who was vaccinated in the early stages got several doses mRNA. So at the absolute best, more testing could have prevented one death there. But maybe not. Given that, your vehemently disagreement is difficult to understand.
> therefore the world could have waited a year, locked down
I don't know where you live, but in liberal Western democracies lock downs are problematic. The USA mostly failed at it as did most places. Australia did better, but babies going without food when parents weren't allowed to leave apartments effected with COVID caused a lot of angst even with people who broadly agreed with the direction the government took. Such mistakes are entirely avoidable of course, but when sudden drastic action happens fubar's are inevitable. (And it wasn't that serious because locals who weren't in a locked down zone purchased food out of their own pockets and dropped it off.)
The reality is, the enforced of vaccination for some groups of people was much easier for most Australians to swallow than those lock downs, mask mandates, enforced distancing, mandatory tracking apps on your phone, and enforced hand washing. You are in a small minority that thinks otherwise. When you look at the social and economic costs of lock downs vs mRNA vaccines (which history has shown to be very safe), the choice looks to be a no-brainer to me. China did for example did go the lock down route, and were able to enforce it because they aren't a liberal democracy. The outcome by every metric was far worse that Australia, who abandoned lock downs as soon as enough vaccines became available.