How much evidence is needed so we stop labeling this theory as conspiracy? Xi's admission?

So they specifically tried and succeeded to turn multiple virus' that didn't effect humans into ones that did? What is the purpose of doing that to begin with?

The usual purpose of these studies is to anticipate wild strains doing the same thing, to get ahead of pandemics, and develop vaccines before it spreads.

Unfortunately it's a waste if you: Don't heed the research anticipating wild spread or publish results, don't develop a vaccine, and/or accidentally release your enhanced virus before a wild strain pops up.

Has any virus actually been headed off with a vaccine already having been created in anticipation of the virus coming into existence eventually? That's really interesting

Edit: and how useful would it be if it was? I was under the impression that covid vaccines were made extremely quickly and that it was regulatory issues that held it until now

In the past, I think the research has been of limited use. However, speculating into the future, with the advances in vaccine development we could possibly see fruit from that sort of research. A lot of the bans on Gain of Function research has recently ended. Still, scary stuff!

Perhaps a second source?

Taiwan commenting on the wrongdoings of China seems a little...problematic

The article discusses a 2014 U.S. ban on virus gain-of-function experiments. Looking it up, I found this 2015 Nature article which also mentions the ban.

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...

Here's a link to the 2017 Wuhan labs research paper that was quoted: "we constructed a group of infectious bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones with the backbone of WIV1 and variants of S genes from 8 different bat SARSr-CoVs" https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

One week "conspiracy theories are stupid", another week "hey look at these conspiracy theories"

Its not a conspiracy when you can find research papers published by Wuhan scientists describing exactly what they were doing.

Most conspiracies are based from connneconnecting real facts. Most times those connections are disregard. As glitches, coincidences, mistakes, like in the election fraud.

In this case the subtext conspiracy being that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, or a Chinese bat soup, or a weapon released by the Chinese government, or from a Chinese wet market, ... Mainstream is just slowly building many narratives, to let the sheep make the "connections"

There was a case in Italy in Milan in November 2019, as we get to know today. Can we stop speculating?

Can we stop being blind to possibilities? Unless you can prove that it originated in Italy you ought to stop silencing other views that make you uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable? There is actual proof that the virus was already present in Italy in November 2019. So it wasn't fabricated after in China.