My take is there was 'something' going on (apart from all the lies and obfuscations we've discussed endlessly of course.) and there is a patent/research trail of who did the gain of function research and where they did it, and when they did it. My suspicion is that when they were ready they let it out all around the world in different places so there would be enough evidence that 'something' different was happening. The major part was the marketing and scare campaigns of course. Can I prove any of it? Nope, but it fits what I observed, especially in terms of how government acted, what they accomplished for themselves (or the global empire they are part of).
