From the sounds and looks of it this guy has had one to many drinks and a huge man crush on the person interviewing him. They don't have to mutate new viruses as viruses do that naturally and there's no way they could guarantee replication of a new variant, they could produce a new variant but just as in nature, just as seen with the flu vaccines there's no way to predict which variant would be prominent. Maybe that's why it was just a topic of discussion to the hair brains like this guy who was in the meeting and the idea was pushed aside. When he mentioned epitopes there was something different...as it was part of a discussion in a article on yahoo about them wanting to develop a once a year universal vaccines by isolating similarities that the virus and it's variants all have in common, they had a name for it but I forget what it was, but every virus has a structured part to it of similarities. Actually they have more than one. They claim they are close to developing a universal vaccine using one of the structured parts to flu viruses. It, they claim has taken years of experiments to find a structured part that when all flu viruses were targeted to that structured part the end result was it was successful in warding off the virus. So if they could isolate in every flu virus the same part to the development of a vaccine whereas the end result was the same, warding off the virus, they could therefore develop a universal vaccine that one size would fit all so to speak. They are thinking of using the same concept with covid. I guess you could or would call it a new epitope. Of course you could only get there by taking the part you want to isolate and injecting it into a monkey to see if it's successful and continue on with each part from a variant and seeing if it also is successful, basically it would involve testing the virus, than adding a variant, than another, than another so they could see if the trend continue. They wouldn't be adding the entire original virus or variants just the part they isolated that are all the same. It's not gain of function because you aren't trying to build a new virus, or gain function, they are taking a part that is all similar and seeing if they can kill it, or get an immune response that targets that specific similarity in that family of viruses. The flu one was hard because there are different classes of influenzas. Not that I am ever taking it when it gets to market, they've done lost that trust.
The guy openly admits he doesn't work in the scientific department but the I stuck some peanut butter in some chocolate and it never formed into a perfect peanut butter cup guy Malone Patsy could have explained this whole thing to you, he didn't, that's why he's a Patsy pushing propaganda that is misleading to people. I also won't be taking any universal covid vaccine either. Malone Patsy could have just told you experimenting on monkeys is how the scientific world works but he couldn't even offer up that little tidbit.