We need better ways to deal with viruses. There really should be a CRISPR/mRNA way by now to immediately cure this stuff like antibiotics for bacteria by now.
We are no where near an antiviral that could be as ubiquitous as antibiotics.
It’s so cheap and easy that undergraduate lab students can learn the process and do it in an afternoon.
Why do you think this is the case?
Mammal immune systems are much more complex with dedicated cells and mechanisms.
We were willing to spend that much for covid, which how we got the results so fast.
We're not so willing for much else, which is why it being that fast was the thing conspiracy theorists hooked onto.
Which we did do, it's just there's normally a bigger gap while we think about the results, go looking for funding for the next stage.
With covid (based on reporting at the time, Gell-Mann Amnesia applies), we were building the factories to make the vaccines before we knew which vaccine would be made in that factory.
As well as it went, it wasn't overly ambitious. A few billions of dollars probably could have accelerated widespread availability by months (I'm thinking mostly about producing earlier, with the risk that the production would end up as waste if the vaccine didn't prove out).