In Vanity Fair's lab-leak theory story, there was an illustrative detail:
*> Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO ["Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight"] framework was largely met with shrugs and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: “If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology.” He added, “Ever since the moratorium, everyone’s gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway.”
A whole field wants certain research to happen, with minimal limits. They don't want to admit, or even let themselves believe, that their peers' accident killed 20 million people. It's a hard pill to swallow!
It's clear that there have been moratoriums on GoF without stopping "all of virology," so whatever was meant by this "wink wink nudge nudge" is really unclear.
Also, in the prior paragraph, the reporter talks about "details of proposed experiments being secret" but that's just standard practice for literally all government funding of science. As if they shouldn't be secret for some reason in this case.
If this the sort of weak sauce, I mean, come on.
Just a bunch of weird insinuations, and having read more, saying there's "omerta" on this seems even less likely.
How about at least a little bit of real meat?
Claims like this, without evidence, reallt detract from any other point you want to make. Because it seems that your thumb is pretty heavy in the scale, without any evidence.