There was a warning sign much earlier.
When NHIH dug up the 1918 Spanish flu virus from the Alaskan permafrost,, was around 2014 iirc.
Tony’s excuse was to come up with a vac in case something like it appeared.
I thought at the time it was suspicious to dig up a virus that was for all practical purposes extinct to make a vac for something that didn’t exist. But I think Tony was working on the excuse of making a vac for something that ‘ might’ exist in the future. The whole rationale for gain of function research. An excuse to make a deadly pathogen even more deadly and opps release it so he could make a fortune on vaccines .
Which he did.
All they could do was induce GOF on the Spanish Flu. Human beings who survived, passed down the immunity through children. That bug cannot cause the same harm today. Now if it was “tweaked” it could.