Something very important that I didn't mention in my post - the virus mutates very quickly and each of the major variants seems to evade the vaccine of the last major variant.
Here in Australia I will be going to get my 4th shot in a few weeks. I only get one 'flu shot a year though in comparison, and I got MMR decades ago.
People pushing extreme and divisive politics and religious beliefs are more likely to get votes when people are frightened and under stress. Unfortunate but true.
Gain of function research is very important in that you get to see how a pathogen behaves. From this you can formulate a plan/vaccines/treatment etc. It is too difficult to infer from what is already known. You just gotta be careful.
That COVID-19 is new in humans, is incredibly fast spreading, evades both vaccines and tests worries me. Now it just needs to pick up some genes that can cause it to be more deadly and we are in a lot more trouble.
Did a postgrad degree in Mol Bio a while back, and I cannot think of any reason why this virus has/will not pick up genes that would increase its pathogenicity.