You're trying to frame this as a scientists vs the everyman debate, but there were plenty of scientists who were against gain of function research and warned that this exact scenario could happen.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
"Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used19. However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone"
One of the authors of this paper is mentioned in the article, he's walked back his stance a bit.