Eventually I started seeing some serious discussion about how it might have been accidentally created through gain of function research.
If it was a lab leak, by far the most likely explanation is that someone pricked themselves or caught a whiff of something.
A friend of mine who lived in China for a while and is familiar with the hustle culture there had his own hypothesis. Some low level techs who were being given these bats and other lab animals to euthanize and incinerate were like “wait… we could get some money for these over at the wet market!”
No, that was just the straw man circulated in your echo chamber to dismiss discussion. To be clear, there were absolutely people who believed that, but the decision to elevate the nonsense over the serious discussion is how partisan echo chambers work.