1 Slight correction..  The mental meltdown only admitted that Pfizer was conduction gain of function research on COVID to develop vaccines against more virulent forms, he never stated they were releasing it.  Of course, Pfizer doesn't have any legal BSL-4 labs and would be doing this in BSL-3 labs or below.  Introducing gain of function to COVID to make it more virulent makes this decision questionable at the least; Musolini treament in a worst case.

2 Not nearly as skeptical as you wish you could be, I think.

I'm not as skeptical as I wish I could be. 

The basic issue is that we do have a massive problem of betrayal by experts. 

However, I have every reason to believe that PhDs can be gross idiots lacking basic competence in their nominal field.  I do not have to believe that a company employing PhDs means that the PhDs can even do what they want to do, and say that they can do.

You would need some sort of cells to culture the virii in, and that is almost certainly a paper trail, and a more risky one if the work is being done in the US. 

Furthermore, there are the questions of inference about 'Covid 19'.  We have anecdotes, but the only real conclusive evidence that it even exists would have to be statistical, and the basis for the stats has clearly been boogered by the information war.

Basic detection hypothesis for anythign has a false alarm rate.  Our folks leaped to declaring that the PRC claims were totally unimpeachable, while ignoring that the PRC had also claimed that it could have come from the US Army bio weapons place. 

There's a bunch of stuff that publicly available information cannot rule out after you try to sort for the lying.  a) US bioweapon b) it doesn't exist, there were only ordinary colds c) naturally occurring, but did not have the claimed properties, which were of the holy grail of respiratory viral bioweapons d) naturally occurring, but for the first time in human history with the claimed properties  e) unnaturally occurring, without claimed properties  f) unnaturally occurring, with claimed properties. 

The ordinary situation with respiratory virii should be a lot of strains infecting various populations, with a fair rate of mutations and cross overs from animal populations. 

Unless you had engineered a new type of virus entirely, a coronavirus based bioweapon should mutate like a coronavirus, IE, rapidly.  Because mutation should be somewhat statistical and tied to structure of the genetics. 

If your engineered bioweapon is initially distributed in a very lethal configuration, a general prediction is that further mutation is going to break stuff, and result in less lethal strains.  The major reason to expect it to grow more lethal would be if you knew that the point on the genetic space that you release is very close to several other much more lethal points.  But, if you know that, why not release one of those instead?

Mutating stuff in the lab is probably going to get strains that are less effective, unless you also have a lot of informed and skilled manpower trying to find the rarer mutations that improve effectiveness as a weapon.  Less effective strains would still be effective at selling vaccines, as long that you had media allies to provide information warfare support. 

I tend to figure that the most dangerous strains probably died out prior to the lcokdown, that the post lockdown strains were probably mostly nothing, and I am not sure that the lunatics have the resources to produce a strain worth worrying over. 

We recently had a Speaker election go for four or five days, and fifteen votes. Federal funding now is not necessarily stable.  The guy's federal program could have gotten cut off, and he could have had a psychotic break just prior to the date. 

The expected peaceful path out of the political mess involves a lot of leftists having psychotic breaks.  They were never really sane, but were stable, but current circumstances will be pretty hard when it comes to a lot of them and their mental health.