It is a strange problem indeed. I'm in a similar job seeking position as OP having difficulty convincing some companies that my lack of certain concrete knowledge should be a non-issue, when you consider the true spirit of what a software engineer is not what you know, but how you come to know things and your ability to adapt to them.

As a SWE, I've been told many times that the ability to pick up new techs and languages should be your bread and butter, and I believe this strongly. If you understand the basics of network requests and REST patterns then most web frameworks are the same. Frameworks are just abstractions on top of the basics. In the real world of job searching, nobody seems to care. They prefer specific names for keywords.

I've also been playing the numbers name for far too long that seems like I'm falling into a sunk cost fallacy. Unemployed since late 2019 and sent out nearly 2000 cold applications. Given a set of inputs defining job experience, what is someone's probability of getting an offer within the next week after 20 applications? After 100? Or after 500?

I tend to hate solving problems that give no visible signs of progress towards seeing the end, but at least when I do these kinds of problems at work, I'm getting paid for it. Right now I am trying to solve such a problem but without compensation, without much motivation.

Getting a job offer right now is biggest challenge that I've encountered in my life. I have not been as confused or clueless, nothing I've done for my career ever came close to stumping me. And it also should NOT have to be the biggest challenge in my life. Better candidates should be things like, how to organize and manage a team for a very large work project, or how to plan your savings strategy for an early retirement. Finding a job should be among the most basic challenges, not super complicated.