People have been trying to make malaria vaccines for over 100 years. Well over 100 vaccines have gone into clinical trials in people. Very, very few have worked to any degree.
Malaria is not a virus, it’s not a bacterium. It’s a protozoan parasite, some thousands of times larger than a typical virus. A good measure of that is how many genes it has. Covid has 13, malaria has about 5,500. This is one of the reasons that malaria is super complex.
With the help of the revolutionary new R21/Matrix vaccine the disease could be eradicated by 2040 (as claimed).
Thankfully this has been true up till now!
From what I read, malaria isn’t spread human-to-human, so it matters more directly whether you yourself have been vaccinated. Herd immunity isn’t much of a factor. If malaria started spreading near you, get vaccinated against it. Those who don’t would die.
Yes, a malaria vaccine would be just to protect yourself from getting malaria.