That's a great question! MRNA Vaccines are an interesting case because the initial discovery can probably be pinpointed to 1995, so the idea has been around for 25 years! Still, it was being developed as a vector for cancer therapies, not as a vaccine (probably for financial reasons). So the pivot to vaccines is an interesting aspect in its own right.

Still, I don't see any real difference in the time it takes to go from an initial discovery to a significant market impact. While aadoption was accelerated in a few places, such as mRNA and videoconferencing others, such as quantum computing, holomorphic encryption, advanced battery chemistries, etc, weren't affected.

You could, of course, argue that CRISPR has gone much faster, but genetic engineering has been around a long time, so the "engineering" and 'transformation" phases were very well developed.

One interesting aspect of the pandemic is how it changes, hopefully permanently, how researchers collaborated across national, institutional and organizational barriers. That is likely to speed things up, but we'll just have to see.

In the final analysis though, I think the main issue is that we tackle much tougher problems these days. So even with improved collaboration and faster technologies, making a significant impact still takes time.