> People don't advance a hypothesis without enough anecdotes to say "look over there"

They do so all the time. They'll advance hypothesis even without ancedotes on the vaguest of hunches, and bias towards Type I pattern recognition errors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjLmU0Sfu4). This is in fact half the problem - why anecdotes alone aren't terribly useful, and must be treated with so much caution and skepticism. Needless to say that primary caregivers and epidemiologists are already drowning in such ancedotes as well, they're not exactly aided in us adding more noise to the discussion where they're not even looking.

There is such a thing as "enough anecdotes" - when they're numerous enough to rise to the quantity of being actual statistically measurable data. But you yourself practically admit such ancedotes fail to meet that bar by suggesting some secret first wave that's indistinguishable from the regular flu season in the data. Either the ancedotes form useful data or they don't - you can't have it both ways.

"Enough ancedotes" led us to our current conclusions, not this hypothetical secret first wave stuff you suggest. "Enough ancedotes" say "don't bother looking over there, we've figured it out", on account of failing to rise to the standard of useful statistical data to contradict our current conclusions. We've been checking, and are going to continue to check, for contradictory evidence anyways - despite the lack of usefully contradictory ancedotes - just for thoroughness, given the size, scope, and impact of the epidemic.

> People like you can help

...by spending my time embracing social distancing, masks, calming the histronics of hypochondriacs, and by guiding doubt towards those who deserve it the most and where it's going to be the most useful, actionable, and effective. We have a number of botched pandemic responses - exacerbated by censorship, political manuvering, misinformation, and so much more - with direct lesson to teach us about how to properly react next time, and parts of our government and geopolitics we need to fix. There are ongoing problems like the lack of randomized testing to give us an idea of where we're at now. Things we have hard data for. Things we can change by voting or lobbying our congresscritters or influencing debate or through direct individual action to support those in need, or helping the helpers.

But entertaining the conspiracy theorist fueling armchair "hypothesizing" about alternative virus origin stories? Does our political and epidemic policy really change if, say, technically this started several months earlier than we realized in Russia? This "maybe hypothetically a second wave!" still kicked off in China, regardless. I don't see the hypothetical policy changes. I don't see the upside. I don't see how this hypothesizing "helps". I think, in fact, that it hurts - by further stressing people out when they're already stressed out (which has real health impacts), and driving them towards unreasonable levels of distrust in the scientific method and community (which has been very upfront about the many things that are actually properly unknown about this epididemic). I think it's the same nonsense that leads to the antivax mindset. It reminds me of gaslighting.

And so, on this topic, I think helping means poking all the obvious holes I can in said "hypothesizing" - as a perhaps useful example to follow - as to how one might differentiate this armchair debate from actual reasonable doubt. On the off chance that I'm wrong, it invites a proper useful rebuttal or counter-argument. On that note, I again emphasize:

>> If you have some epidemiologist's proposed study that you're trying to drive funding towards [...] it'd be a welcome breath of fresh air on the topic, and I'd suggest sharing that as a far more useful and constructive way of advancing the hypothesis.

But since you seem to be hypothesizing about 2022 congressional committees instead of any of the stuff actively being looked into while half the bloody economy has been put on hold, I won't hold my breath.