I don't think there is any UFO catcher with axolotl still in Japan. the "Woopa Looper" boom was in the 80s and died quite quickly afterwards.
The fad to eat the things deep fried lasted a little longer I think.

The "massive" study where the authors openly accepted they were overly stringent with the kind of studies that were included in the metanalysis and that was analyzed with the method that is more likely to end up detecting benefits? because that do NOT support what you claim, their conclusions were that they could not find enough evidence to settle the question, which everybody already knew by the time anybody read the methods and understood how it would not take into account enough of the already available information.

Just search around what any association that deals with infectious diseases say about masks, you don't believe they are unaware of the studies, do you?

Yes you are, viral infections have a dose dependent risk of infection, one, 100, 10,000 viruses entering the body all have different probability of causing infection, this is even observed on cell tissues (that only have a very limited immune system to fight the infection) much more on actual living organisms.

The data that shows the prevention is significant when used by the general population instead of just those in close contact with heavily symptomatic patients.

"This" did not happen in the first place. According to every recognized scientific authority the natural origin is by much the more likely explanation for many different reasons, "originofcovid.org" is not a realiable source of scientific information, it systematically misrepresents information towards a fixed and biased conclusion not supported by the actual evidence available, which is why it is not taken seriously in any scientific discussion.

Gain of function is being done in every research laboratory in the world and has been available for many decades, at this point no pandemic can be linked to any "lab leak" meanwhile useful life-saving interventions (like vaccines including against COVID) can be proved to be result of this kind of research.

False, the identified viruses are not the precursors but only tangentially related viruses that offer a much lower degree of information that would make the progress less likely to happen.
And no, having the identification of ancestor viruses as an objective do not mean they were already identified, precisely because the scenario is the most likely explanation (according to the scientific consensus) is why is so important to have it described in detail. So something can be done to prevent it happening (which has already done since December 2019, thankfully while in measures against respiratory infections)

"Frankly, can someone think of a scenario that actually ends in a situation that is better?"

-Scenario: Virus came from nature as every other pandemic ever, the origins are clarified and characterized, precursor virus and closely related variants identified and the process of the jump described in detail
-Result: ancestor virus antigens mapped and a vaccine that allows immunity against these not-yet-well-adapted viruses developed, people can now be protected from the next SARS virus so it becomes much more difficult that it can successfully jump to humans. Next pandemic (from highly pathogenic coronavirus) averted.

I think that scenario is realistic and would justify investigating the origins.

One step closer to get Ichigeki Sacchu!! HoiHoi-san (One-Shot Bug Killer!! Interceptor Doll HoiHoi-san)

What happened in Japan with ivermectin? nobody is using it. Nearly universal mask use and a cultural background of basic social distancing measures even before the pandemic have kept the cases low.

The problem is that they did not plan realistically, $25K to replicate these kind of experiments by an external lab is not doable. They took the best case scenario (what would it cost for the people that already did it once and have all the details solved) and tried to apply it to the worst case scenario (do it again by different people, with different equipment, without lots of necessary information, etc.)

sure, as long as you ignore the vast mayority of the people that get infected with SFTSV and never get more than a slight fever for some days.

These kind of chimeras are not necessary for this kind of risky situation, experimental animals are right now routinely "humanized" by modifying their genome in order for them to express human proteins, this makes the humanized animals susceptible to some human diseases and theoretically facilitates the appearance of pathogens that can now infect humans (specially viruses). The new chimeras of this post are actually safer since their offspring would not carry any human traits so they can't be mass produced.

At the beginning it was all very fuzzy and cases very uncharacteristic for viruses of the same family, but the research that has been done in the last few months is admirable, it is now completely clear that, even if it was unexpected, Zika acts like its mild fever type of related virus in adults (like Dengue and Yellow Fever) but becomes much more like the neurocentric cousins of the family in embryos (like West Nile and Japanese Encephalitis). Anybody that is following the reports, even if only the titles, was expecting this conclusion from the CDC and WHO.

I mean, this has been studied for many examples in the past but this experimental design results put a lot more weigh on this theory. I could not find the original article so I don't know what they used as a control, but as long as they deleted also equivalent sequences of the genome (not ERVs) without observing the drop of immunity this approach would clearly demonstrate this mechanism.

I understood the paper differently, researchers used gut viruses to trick the mouse immune system to go into a "colonization resistance" state that prevent the appearance of pathogenic bacteria, eventually they only needed to directly stimulate the immune system to reach the same state.