I started reading this thread for other reasons but what is read cannot be unread I suppose...

I'm with you on the gain of function research. That happened and it was lied about. Now one could argue that it was unintentional and that the NIH did not ultimately know at the time the grant was made that it was going to be used in that manner. But that is really no excuse even if true. One could also argue that despite that funding, there is no direct link (yet) between that and COVID-19...but I don't believe in coincidences that big either.

Where you lost me is on the vaccine starting to kill people "en-masse". What is the evidence for that? When do you expect that to start happening?

I feel like existing conspiracy theories (and I am not trying to use that term pejoratively here) are contradicting each other somewhat. On one hand, COVID-19 isn't a big deal, on the other hand gain of function research created a super virus and was funded by the U.S. in China. If COVID-19 is a big deal then a vaccine makes sense even if it was created in a lab and even if it was done to line the pockets of "big pharama". If it isn't a big deal, then the gain of function research isn't either (in that it hasn't produced anything we know about).

I can't say with authority what the origin of COVID-19 is. I can say that based on my own personal observations that the vaccine helps more than it hurts. Despite being anecdotal, I put a lot of weight on what my personal observations are given how statistics can so easily be manipulated and 50% of which are completely made up. And when I say "personal observations", I don't mean stuff I read on the internet. I mean people I know of in real life, usually through some level of indirection...friends of friends and so forth...I've been fortunate that no one close to me has had serious complications with either COVID or a vaccine. At any rate, those observations have led me to know of a few people that have died from COVID 100% unvaccinated, fewer people that have been hospitalized due to COVID but have been vaccinated. And nobody that had died from COVID and been vaccinated or died or was hospitalized from being vaccinated.

Now if the vaccine is really a time bomb waiting to go off to kill mass numbers of people, I definitely would be interested in knowing about it...but tend to be very dismissive of such a theory without solid evidence.