You are covering broad strokes and I can not help but feel your history of viruses is somewhat limited. Or their real effects on world economics and politics and how pandemics in the past have literally changed the course of history as we know it through secondary effects.
The concentration on if or if there was not a lab leak is warranted, but it is a back-burner issue. Yes - back-burner issue. Bottom of the pile.
It has been known for many years which viruses we need to be watching out for that would eventually make the jump and I can assure you we have many types of viruses that have previously existed, and that will exist that are far more of a concern than the inevitable one we have now. There are some real motherfuckers that have existed that are somewhere in the permafrost in some flesh, or perhaps an airborne hantavirus (See The English "Sweating sickness") is lurking under a burial chamber in someone's apartment in London. Or perhaps the virus Ebola that the Russians crossed with smallpox will get loose and then you'll see a 90% human population reduction with authority given to torch alive anyone who tries to cross over from the infected country. These are VERY real and do exist. Perhaps it will cross to swine and then aback again to fuck us harder. Not to say this one we have isn't a bad one - it is, but the idea it wasn't expected to arrive would not be true. It has been expected for some time and frankly is a little late to the party. Whether or not it was engineered, whether or not it was leaked.
The top scientists are not concerned with the origins as much as they are about what happens next with this virus and that's where their attention needs to be.
I do not know if you understand this fully; but this virus as it currently stands represents a serious threat to the global economy and to humans for a variety of reasons and could easily lead to not only war, but a decoupling of the global initiative. Much as the car changed the global economy, so can this virus change the human existence - simply because I would compare it to dangerous leggo set. Its parts are perfect for humans but it can take various forms.
I want you to consider for a moment a scenario in that it keeps mutating, and that it wipes out 2% of the global population each year for 20 years straight. Think of it like my friend last December that brushed off the virus in 24 hours, who is now in hospital with a variant and has 50/50 odds of living. Fact. Brushed it off in December 2020 and is now fighting for his life. And imagine it mutates to infect kids and kill them as often as it does adults, and that every time someone gets infected (and they are expected to get infected once per year), that the odds of permanent disability or diminished lung, nerve or brain function drop from 1 in 2,000 per year, to after 20 years 1 in 100. So that 1% of the global population that doesn't die is permanently disabled.
What happens if it mutates so that there is a 1 in a 100, or 200 odds that it kills your kid? Willing to make that gamble? That's a pretty brave gamble and it might come to that. Schools gone. economies gone. Millions of the workforce will be forced to stay at home and look after their kids. Governments will print money to hold up the place.
This is a scenario that could unfold unless we let the experts do their jobs and stop fucking taking away their time with stupid fucking questions and hearings or firing them because they don't say what you want to hear.
These are scenarios that are very real, and it would help to understand what is really behind global movements right now and here at home. We are possibly facing a very serious challenge to the global order of things and this is what at the forefront of their minds. Biden alluded to this in his State of Union if you listen carefully when he addressed the GOP specifically on the point of the virus. Listen.
So while you may or may not eventually find out if it came from a lab or not, this minor detail that pails in comparison to the real threat we may have - is what is at the forefront of those in charge. Lab or no lab be damned. We are talking about Chamberlain 2 years into the war.
This virus may just entirely upend the world as we know it and we are experiencing it in slow motion. The real news flash is what we've experienced barely qualifies as a first wave. Barely...
This virus will infect billions. And in the USA if we do not protect against the variants, we may well in 1 year be back to square one entirely with almost none of the population immune to the new variants - which historically (may not hold true but probably based on the direction we've seen) will be more deadly, and more transmittable and then the new wave will not crush, it will bury the hospitals. You won't have to die from it to suffer, secondary causes of death through economic hardship and a wiping out of economies will kill more than the virus over time.
I'd say rather than stupid fucking hearings on the capital by Politicians trying to score points as to whether or not they can catch Fauci double talking or backtracking instead focus on what it on the minds of the top virologists on Earth, and what Fauci will never say under the guidelines of national security in front of a camera.
And that is, "We might quite possibly all be seriously fucked. And you want me to invest my agencies time, money and efforts in order to know if Bruce Lee is to blame?!".
Gods speed on your inquest - it will solve nothing and solve nothing of what we are in the middle of or might be in years to come.