Vaccination for 5 to 11 year olds is really tricky as the risk of serious illness from Covid in that age group is so low that the risks from the vaccine might be greater. The counter argument is that children within that age group do come into contact with more vulnerable individuals and the vaccines do reduce the risk of transmission (or at least they did before Omicron, which is so tranmissible that all bets may now be off). In addition, every time the virus spreads and is replicated there is a risk of mutataion such as to give rise to further variants.
The prioritisation of research into illness is firstly driven by market forces. The pharmaceutical companies like to work on widespread chronic illness because that is where the money is - produce a new treatment for, say, asthma and watch the money roll in. That situation has a significant downside and explains why there have been no new classes of antibiotic coming to the market for decades (antibiotics aren't very profitable because they are increasingly rationed to try to reduce the risk of resiatant strains of bacteria developing).
The second driver for research is public sentiment. Breast cancer research, for example, is well funded in the UK because the breast cancer charities have proved remarkably adept at fund raising. Other killers, like prostrate cancer, have been left behind by comparison.
To move back towards the OP, the rapid development of 'new generation' mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna and via a different methodolgy, Astra Zenica, holds out a lot of hope for treating other illnesses including cancer. Covid gave the development of the technology a huge boost.


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