Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose a better question in that case would be: is it possible to engineer something like SARS-CoV-2 in a lab (perhaps via existing GOF techniques) if it were one's explicit intent to cause a damaging pandemic? That's a more important question about whether or not this particular virus came out of a lab or not, because, if the answer to the above is "yes", then we need to take whatever your/whoever's proposed miti…
Your argument is that we should take very stringent preventative measures whether or not COVID leaked from a lab. While I agree with that, what this misses is that knowledge of if and how the virus escaped is valuable knowledge that helps us by showing us where the flaws in our current processes are. Flight safety is a fitting analogy. You need to analyze exactly why a plane crashed so that you can see the gaps in cu…
If it could be made in a lab and released (intentionally or accidentally), another could be made in a lab and released (intentionally), and our strategy should be exactly the same even if SARS-CoV-2 is of entirely natural origin, as the entire planet now knows the destructive value of this class of bioweapons (if constructing such artificially is within our technology).
The US ban on GOF research suggests that it is believed to be technically feasible to achieve this. This means we must proceed strategically as a species as if the lab leak hypothesis were true, because over time the probability of an intentional lab leak approaches 1. The origin of this particular pandemic remains irrelevant in that case.