Yeah, viruses are interesting that way. In fact we recently got omicron strain and a colleuge have been trying to grow it. It shows entirely different pattern of growth in the cells compared to the rest of the previous strains (won't comment on what the pattern is as I don't have permission to share any details) Completely agree on the politics and greed part. I mean look at what happened to all those antiviral drugs that were fast tracked and seemed promising initially. But litrature on basic virology is huge. As far as basic science is concerned I think that wont change much. Majority of work being done still relies on basic science knowledge we have gathered from previous work. I would be rathe surprised to see an obnoxious change in basic virology impacted by politics or greed. Anyway, basic science is hardly ever monetarily rewarding to fuel it. But I would be curious to see if anything weird pops up, for sure.

Also, thanks for reading and your wonderful comment. 🙂