In practice this is what we observe, but the combinatorics are so ridiculously large that its hard to understand how it works. A very small protein of say 200 amino acid residues has 21^200 configurations. If every atom in the universe was another universe, and every atom in those universes was a universe, you'd still need 10^20 grandpappy universes to represent each configuration as a distinct atom in the grandchild universe. Given that these configurations confer meaningful chemical and mechanical utility, sometimes with discontinuities in effect, it's really odd to me that it all somehow works.

Much shorter time frames than that are still powerful, especially for something like a virus.

Yeah the number of generations is more important than the number of years.

We may receive that education somewhat directly and immediately through covid, and failure to vaccinate people.