"Why can't some dead HSV2 be injected in typical vaccine fashion?"
That didn't work as a prophylactic and as a therapeutic a company in Europe sells one since 1977 called Lupidon G; requires 9 months of shots then every 3-6 months. In clinical trials the data has been mixed and no one has really done a double blind clinical trial with it.
Does getting a blood transfusion from someone with HSV2 antibodies make the person receiving the transfusion create the antibodies as well?
No.
why isn't there a vaccine.
Genocea's chief scientist Fletchner and others there showed a person who is asymptomatic recognizes about twice the number of HSV2 proteins as someone who is symptomatic. Thus think of it like this, HSV-2 is like a cancer, your body doesn't recognize all of it as foreign, after all its essentially part of your DNA in a ring in your neuronal nucleus. Thus your body isn't completely controlling it, you live with it. Now getting your body to recognize it as foreign is a lot harder as the body has a certain tolerance to an infection it will act on or what you can think of as a balance between clearing infections and just maintaining healthy cells. One part of this is a major problem with getting antigen presentation as HSV-2 has proteins which are immune evasive; ICP47 blocks the TAP receptor inhibiting MHC 1 presentation, second another protein interferes with dendetric cells, and so on. Heck, up until about 10 years ago science didn't even think neurons had MHC I receptors for the immune system.
By the way ICP47 is why animal models of HSV are almost worthless as ICP47 doesn't work on mice or guinea pigs TAP receptors; only humans - as its a human disease.
Now hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent developing HSV drugs and a lot have failed. Today Amadeus and Genocea are working on better antigen presentation by including ubiquitin protein (Amadeus) and a honey protein (genocea). Another company is working on a prime boost involving dead HSV2 + alum adjuvant to try and get better results - IMHO they won't. Now I wouldn't say ICP0 NLS mutant by rationalvaccines does better presentation; its just a replication competent vaccine with all the immune evasion still there. Meaning it will probably be as effective in people as an inactivated form; all they did was move the growth medium from an egg to the human body. Lastly other companies have tried stimulating the receptors on the cells but the side effects are intolerable and temporary.
What does this mean? The virus lives in the neurons and completely hides itself from your immune system or deactivates it (dendetric cells); meaning it may never be resolved through the current scientific orthodoxies of vaccination. Think of it like this, how can you get your immune system to fight something it doesn't see?
Other factors: science is slowly progressing as HSV is not considered a serious disease and is thus grossly underfunded; next the business case is poor as a generic for HSV is already on the market; the FDA is there is stifle innovation; animal studies are grossly flawed (even NIH top scientists have lamented that they need more human studies - there was a 2014 conference on this).
IMHO curing HSV is like trying to land a man on the moon in 1914. HSV is probably going to require using CRISPR to go in a cleave a section of the viral DNA so that its replication incompetent; killing the neurons poses great risk and side effects.
Is CRISPR coming to market ever? My company looked into this and we determined per FDA requirements for this kind of potential treatment it would require around $30,000 per patient in a phase one trial in the USA just to verify its not toxic. Meaning its about x60 more expensive than a conventional vaccine to test for toxicity. Now imagine raising money from investors telling them giants like Chiron and GSK lost a few hundred millions seeking an HSV drug that you need a few hundred million to test a CRISPR treatment with an FDA which is going to make you spend 10 years in safety trials alone. The business case for a cheap vaccine that is effective in reducing symptoms is a much better business case.