[joshvince]

I understand what you’re saying and I agree that dismissing it out of hand is obviously the wrong approach - but this does feel like it meets the bar to be a “conspiracy theory”, in that people theorise that the dominant answer for something is wrong, and the true answer is being covered up by powerful groups of people.

[netsharc]

Galileo said "the earth is spherical and revolves around the sun, contrary to what's been taught (that the earth is the center of the heavens)". The powerful group called the Church said that's wrong and condemned him and shunned him.

A proper scientific discourse would be to be open to new theories, and let people who guess those theories come up with evidence.

Then again many people on Twitter who are convinced it's a lab leak that's been covered up just yell and scream as well ("It's China and they're cagey, they're hiding something, which mean the lab leak theory must be true!"), which is not how you prove a scientific theory...