What’s even more unfortunate is when scientific leaders reject scientific process for political motivations.

Again, it’s a very reasonable theory that the virus was lab-made. Stop taking other people’s reasonable conjecture in the worst faith, it is anti-intellectual.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Again, it's a theory that has so far no basis in science - it's speculations, mostly by people who have no virology background. They maybe even PhD in other biology fields, but having them present their opinions, with no actual data to back it as facts, is as valid as database experts applying their intuition to reason about how to build ML models.

Meanwhile, viruses jumping spices is extremely well document behavior, and COVID like viruses are known to exists in other mammals. Actual data, and Occam's razor point to lab-made virus being invalid theory. Can experts pursue it? Sure, but until they have actual data, presenting it to the general public is click bait fear mongering.

And you also conveniently ignore that OP also had issues with vaccines, which effectiveness have as much backing by science as any theory could possibly have.

Virologist here :

https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...

I feel like "unintentionally escaped from a lab that was studying coronaviruses" is a lot different from the conspiracy theory type talk about being maliciously engineered. It's unfortunate that this distinction seems to get lost a lot.

The theory that Covid was naturally occurring is also a theory. A true scientist wouldn’t reject a theory out of hand because the theory calls into question finding and research priorities of the scientists doing the rejecting. A lot of this theory rejection isn’t about science but about CYA.

Evolution is also a theory right?

To reject natural origin of COVID you need a lot of research and hard data. Memos and journalists investigations aren’t that.

Equating man made and natural origin as two equally valid theories is just dishonest.

There are many reasonable theories out there, competing for the explanation of various phenomena.

And then there are those who pick and choose the theories they want to relentlessly push and promote, because they support the deepest, most burning desires coming out of their guts.