I see Glenn Reynolds shares my concerns about charging forward with cures for every nuisance illness.

On the one hand, a universal flu vaccine would be great. On the other, say it works for several decades and then a strain of flu evades it. Wouldn’t it be an ugly “virgin field” epidemic at that point?

The variability of having your body develop its own immunity to a bunch of different, but related, bugs helps it prepare for other variations.  I single shot would necessarily have to focus on one commonality among them all, which creates the risk that a bug will come along that lacks that one commonality, although it may have similarities with other illnesses.

This is the idea of the “black swan” event that comes along and wipes you out because it contradicts important assumptions with a low-probability event.

Vaccines are great, but it might be better to work on cures rather than preventions… and then use them only when necessary.