> Re: most of this: an actual virologist has responded and explained the data that would have typically been collected and how it would have helped.
I think they're looking at the best case scenario. Yes, if people were studying the virus then they were hoping to learn something about its effects on humans. But whatever experiments they were performing were presumably in-progress rather than complete, and the odds that they were working on antibodies or the like are pretty narrow.
> Says who? If they lied about accidentally releasing it, why wouldn’t they lie about what they were doing with it in the first place?
What they were working on was public record dating back to years before there was any reason to hide anything. And it makes very little sense to work on a vaccine for a virus that doesn't exist in the wild.
To the last point though:
> They weren't working on that.
Says who? If they lied about accidentally releasing it, why wouldn’t they lie about what they were doing with it in the first place?