The hypothesis that Covid-19 escaped from a laboratory already has strong circumstantial evidence behind it. Lab escapes do happen, have happened, and the WIV is full of corona viruses under study. In fact it contains the closest relatives to Covid-19 known.
Now all of that doesn’t prove anything. It’s just a reasonable hypothesis that’s not yet proven. To characterize it, though, as a “conspiracy theory”, seems disingenuous.
Circumstantial evidence would be if you had a source from inside the lab -- a memo, maybe, or a leak from an intelligence agency that interviewed a whistleblower -- that told you they believed covid was a lab leak. Or maybe that they were working on something with features that match covid better than that bat virus does, etc...
Absent that, sorry, you're engaged in a "conspiracy theory" in the vernacular. Hiding behind the dictionary definition of "conspiracy" isn't really helping your case.
The WIV is in the exact place where the outbreak began, and houses the same strain of viruses, and researches them by breeding new variants. And, viruses have escaped from laboratories before. It occurs fairly regularly.
This is far from a "conspiracy theory", not to mention that it doesn't even involve a conspiracy.
Imagine instead that you pointed to the squashed cat and demanded that I debate the Very Important Possibility that the cat was in fact killed by an illegal Chinese helicopter.
"Uh, dude..." I reply. "That cat was clearly run over by a car."
"But no!", you say. "There have been helicopter slayings in the past, right? And there are no track marks! And the Chinese are known to be developing helicopters that could totally do this to a poor cat. There is an airport just miles away! Look at all these other people who believe in the helicopter theory! YOU ARE SUPPRESSING THIS IMPORTANT EVIDENCE!"
Get the point?
[1] In fact recognized newly evolved strains of existing viruses outnumber "lab leaks" by a factor of something like tens of thousands. Pick any one disease and it's basically guaranteed that it's not a lab leak.
They're referring to a post made here the other day suggesting that there may actually be evidence that is was a lab leak.
But to the conspiracist mind, any statement other than an unambiguous "THIS IS UNCONTROVERTABLY FALSE" becomes twisted into something that sounds like evidence for the conspiracy.
Which is why debunkings need to be firm and clear. Admitting that something is possible in theory is just nodding to people who want to hear something very different.
I don't remember it well enough to say whether I consider it evidence or not. If you haven't seen what I'm referring to then I think you're just being dismissive. In any case, there was a post here many considered credible that claimed to have evidence that it could have come from a lab. Do with that what you will. In the mean time, I don't know whether it came from a lab or not and I don't need to.
And that's how we get conspiracy theories. No one did the homework. There is no completed homework. You're all just cribbing from a faked assignment.
That's not what's happening here at all. I responded to you originally to tell you what someone was referring to.
> Because you want to believe it, you're willing to cede logic and decisionmaking to the internet crowd, figure that someone must have done the homework
No I don't want to believe it and you need to stop. I never knew, never cared, I still don't know and still don't care. You're tilting at windmills here.
Does that help? You're doing the same thing here that a lot of failed debunkers do:
1. Citing establishment authority as if it's the last word. By definition anyone who believes in a "conspiracy theory" has reached that point by concluding the authorities aren't being truthful. That's rather inherent in the nature of what a conspiracy theory is.
2. You aren't taking it seriously. If you were, you would have done a quick bit of Googling and encountered the articles in question that go into a lot of depth on the evidence of the lab leak hypothesis, including a lot of micro-biological evidence.
3. You're making statements that are clearly false. There is evidence, quite a lot of it. Perhaps you won't agree that it's strong enough, but to claim there is no evidence is false. When a debunker makes a statement like this and people know it's false, it degrades the credibility of the whole anti-theory-position, because now people start to suspect that the people denying there's a conspiracy don't really know what they're talking about.
None of that is evidence. Bring evidence.
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...
The core essence of a conspiracy theory, the thing that demands it be debunked, is that it's unfounded. It's an attractive idea without evidence, and one of the tools used in propagating it is to flip the script and point out that the absence of evidence is in fact "absence of disproof", and thus... evidence.
So what are you doing? You're taking an assertion without support (that covid is a lab leak) and then framing it as a legitimate argument by pointing out (1) that it is "not that clear cut" (by which I assume you mean that there's no evidence but not disproof either) and (2) that people who say that it doesn't have support were somehow arguing in bad faith with "poorly constructed" arguments.
This isn't a legitimate fact under dispute. It's just not. There's no evidence, literally, beyond the mailing address of the lab.
> In my opinion, when something is debunked, it should be done in the most rigorous manner and stay as politically neutral as possible.
In my opinion an argument debunking something should be done with simple facts, irrespective of political concomity. Being wrong isn't a political opinion.