You lost me at the "unlike Covid" where we have been through like 6 major variants, with a few dozen minor variants, inside 2 years time.

Usually, a flu vaccine isn't one strain. The vaccine is a combination of several strains that researchers believe will be predominate that year. But, even subvariants of strains don't require absolutely new development of vaccine. It depends on the anti-gen of the strain. Amd this mostly deals with flu A. Flu B is a bit different. Vaccines will have B and a few strains of A in a yearly shot.

I mean, in the simplest scenario, Group B wins. Simply because group A is self selecting themselves out by reproducing below replacement level. I mean, the whole name of the game is ability to reproduce successfully. If Group B is popping out kids like a mushroom releasing spores, then they're brute forcing the reproduction game.

Of course, nothing is that simple. If the devil-may-care attitude ends up with the group not getting a vaccine during a very deadly pandemic, they could be eliminated almost entirely.

I was responding to a post saying there is already an H5N1 vaccine developed. I don't know if that's true, but its not that unbelievable it could be. My point is that if the H5N1 vaccine is already developed, then that significantly shortens the timeline. The lag just becomes the manufacturing ramp, but that can be retooled fairly quickly, and supplies can start moving almost immediately. The lag will be from the first people to get a dose to supply for the eventual demand. That can be slow, but with some planning and foresight, batches of vaccines can be deployed following patterns of outbreak. Basically, instead of months, vaccines could start hitting problem areas in days if there is already some inventory or weeks as production starts on an approved formulation.

But, this is good, even though the vaccine is different. Because a vaccine is already developed. It wouldn't be a significant change to include vaccination against this into current flu vaccinations. That, and we already have quite a lot of experience with flu vaccines. So, this saves a lot of development and approval time on deployment. That's awesome. Now, the current populations education level regarding vaccination is less awesome.

Eh, there's still a lot of interesting things going on in batteries. The new frontier is nano-materials, though. This is where shit can get wild and into real "unobtanium" type properties. Self repairing materials. Materials that can change properties depending on conditions. Molecular robots. A lot of work is being done around carbon, but there is still a wide open range of possibilities.

Oop. And ceramics. That's been a lot of the last 50 years. I keep saying batteries, but there's an increasing amount of money going into conductors and energy storage. But, ceramics have been hot for awhile.

Most of the breakthroughs we have toward unobtanium like properties has arisen from research into alloys (combining elements to make unique metals), or ordinary elements in completely radical environments. Examples are with batteries and ability to hold more charge and charge quicker (combining known elements in new ways) and superconductors (known elements and compounds at extremely cold temperatures).

You don't have to create new atomic elements to make significant breakthroughs in materials. You can do a lot by working with what is already known in new and imaginative ways.