“Do we really think they spent years working on a frivolous, harmless bioweapon that is nothing more than a common cold? I suppose you could believe that... but that's not what I've seen.”

I think they tried to make the most efficiently evil shit imaginable, but it’s not as easy as some might think. There’s the ever present struggle of transmissibility vs lethality. Too nasty, and it kills before it spreads. Too weak and it doesn’t cull the herd. The gain of function goons might not have been able to improve upon the balance of the flu that has evolved over thousands of generations.