In terms of behind closed doors or incomplete reporting, absolutely. Clicking through from the first article you linked (which mentions Daszak being involved with it and quoted defending the work), to the 2013
paper (Zhengli-Li Shi again) and then through to the 22 May 2020
correction, you'll see that the sequence for the chimera was not registered with the gene bank until 2 May 2020. It's reasonable to assume the registration was done in response to those making a point out of its unregistered state in their theories.
The most useful form of gain-of-function studies would presumably mimic possibilities found in nature. Coronaviruses are apparently prone to
recombination and purifying selection, with that article focusing on how a bat CoV might have combined with a pangolin CoV (inside a pangolin). It's dense and I don't claim to understand the details, but it is possible to get the gist of how recombination can be analyzed and what it can do. Were that process engineered in a lab, I doubt it would be possible to identify.
But since the 2013 experiment confirmed that they could indeed create an infectious and harmful virus as predicted from theory, would that not reduce the need to produce more examples? There isn't any real hint of evidence that they continued that line of study (apart from by simulation, I mean).
Overall I don't think there's good reason to focus on it being a lab leak of a virus that was created or blended in the lab - while possible, it's difficult to make that link there without knowing (or having solid candidates for) the viral ancestors and without finding that other connections between them are not more plausible.
It's also possible - but pure speculation - that the lab somehow inadvertently leaked an otherwise relatively harmless virus which went on to blend in some market animals. Pangolin-related theories seem to come in and out of favour, but it's known that they carry a CoV that readily infects via ACE2. As that paper about recombination showed, the right mix of ancestors may have produced covid. The problem, it seems to me, is adequately explaining how (for example) a bat virus from Tuanguan could come to infect a Malayan Pangolin carrying a Pan-CoV that had the possibility of being a covid ancestor.
There's reasonable confidence that the OG SARS developed in palm civets, first cases were at a market handling them, etc. I don't know if / how confidently ancestor virus candidates have been identified for it. There was, in April 2004, a small cluster that was identified as starting with a post-grad student and a researcher in a Chinese CDC lab, so lab leaks certainly can happen even when people know they are working with a dangerous virus.
Well that's probably enough crazy talk from me... there needs to be more pieces of the puzzle on the table before anything is more than speculation. I can agree with abandoning any investigation at the lab (there's surely nothing left to find there after more than a year, if there ever was anything) but not with ruling it out.
While it was inevitable that some pandemic would come along, any particular pandemic requires it's own sequence of - probably each extremely unlikely - unique events to unfold just right.
As if nothing had been learnt froms SARS (and MERS)? And this wasn't speeding from the beginning? OK.
It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in various states - particularly with the differing take-up rates and whether that inversely correlates with hospitalisation rates.
