True, but it's the first time we see those technologies in action. Some (many?) of the vaccine projects for example use paths that have previously been consider

True, but it's the first time we see those technologies in action. Some (many?) of the vaccine projects for example use paths that have previously been considered, played through in "toy" projects that never made it to production and so on, and now they are suddenly standing in the limelight, going live. For some sub-fields of biotech this must almost be like the mindboggling aviation had from roadshow curiosities to a major war factor in hardly more than a decade.