Yeah unfortunately maybe that’s 8 months vs a year.

Flu vaccines don't come every year because they can't be approved sooner, but because there is little need for them to come sooner than a year. Supposedly mRNA vaccines are actually a lot easier to modify, not harder. Pfizer said shifting to a new vaccine is gonna take them six weeks after the decision is taken all in all. I saw a Moderna representative say that actually coming up with the modified vaccine would only take them 2 days. That's probably hyperbolic but they're generally a good bit faster to tweak than the usual. The approval process definitely won't be a major sticking point, it's not very long usually even for less urgent stuff like the flu, I'm guessing they won't require large Phase III trials. So overall I think that if they actually take the decision it's gonna be something closer to 3 months than 8. How long will it take to mass manufacture them and redose people? Idk. Hopefully it's not gonna be as long as this time because production will have already undertaken the large necessary shift towards vaccines and the means to store, transport and administer them.