LR, it seems good to separate the argument into its components, but actually if you're taking the entirety of cherry's position into account, I think you need two more subdivisions:
5) Did Fauci lie, perhaps more than once, about the above matters?
6) Can the American response to covid-19 (past and present) and the public's faith in it be connected to a record of the people feeling lied to?
From cherry's many posts, I feel like points (5) and (6) are chiefly the purpose of asking about points 1-4. And the way points 1-4 actually boil down seems to me to actually change how we should be responding to the information being provided. For instance, let's say Wuhan did do gain-of-function research, and charitably let's say it was done for the purposes of beneficial knowledge rather than for gaining the power to do harm. And let's say the NIH knowingly funded it, but for the same reason (putting aside that it was done in an inferior security setup in Wuhan). Now Fauci denies any connection to that funding, or to Wuhan. But if covid-19 really didn't come from any lab, and was totally, natural, that would actually lend credence to having had the foresight to try potentially risky research knowing it could help with a horrible pandemic down the road. You could actually gloat at having seen ahead to what really did happen, and say you tried to nip it in the bud. So why deny any connection, when in a way admitting a connection would be a sort of badge of honor? Maybe it's because they knew (or later found out) about the inferior level-2 security system at Wuhan. So that could be a lie meant merely to deflect from admitting that the theoretically good concept was being conducted improperly. Administrative BS, incompetence, and cutting corners; the usual. But even then you'd think it would be kind of easy to blame China for being deceptive about their security precautions (probably the case anyhow), and say that the funding was in principle and important step in preventing a pandemic. Some people might be upset, some would approve. But instead, the blanket denial can't avoid looking like lying and self-serving dissembling about semantics.
And this goes to cherry's general argument about mask mandates and flipflopping on those. I won't address whether I agree with him on this general point, but I think if you want to frame the broader argument in context, it goes something like that when you lie to people 'for their own good' it starts to feel like it's really for your own good and not theirs, and you get significant amount of people who stop believing anything at all being reported about what they should do and what the facts are. The breakdown of trust seems to me more relevant than precisely whether or not the NIH made a mistake or was visionary. And the issue of health mandates being politicized seems to be part of it too. Did many Americans refuse to comply with health recommendations because of things Trump said? Maybe. But maybe they were already pissed and distrustful enough (hence why they voted for him in the first place) that they would have been of that disposition with or without Trump. And that, too, speaks to people feeling lied to. They probably feel like that because they are in fact repeatedly lied to. Just look at the story the other day about the blatant lies about the drone strike in Afghanistan, and all credibility goes out the window. They will say anything if they think it will pass, and when it doesn't that news cycle is already over and they think they got away with it. But really they didn't because they're damaging the body politic.
