The lab leak origin of the SARS2 unpleasantness was called a 'conspiracy theory' and those who supported it were called 'crackpots' and 'science deniers'.
Those who voiced doubt on the efficacy and safety of the mRNA therapies pushed for the same were called 'crackpots' and 'science deniers' by the same crowd.
The same was true for those who were open to other treatments for the disease, things like Ivermectin and the like.
It has taken many years and the jury is still out on the efficacy of many 'alternative therapies' but by now it is clear that the virus did escape from the very same lab pointed out by all those 'conspiracy theorists' and 'science deniers', that the mRNA therapies lacked efficacy and that the lack of a targeting mechanism for delivering mRNA to the right locations - in this case mucous membranes - while keeping it away from organs which stood to be harmed if the mRNA were to be delivered there - ovaries, testes, heart muscles and more - radically changed the risk profile for delivering these agents to younger people who were unlikely to be harmed by the virus but were (and are) at risk of harm from those same agents.
And what happened to the reputations of those who labelled these dissenters 'conspiracy theorists' and 'crackpots'? Nothing happened, they just moved to whatever cause the current desired narrative dictates - we've always been at war with Eurasia after all?
It is remarkable how risk-free it is to label people 'conspiracy theorists' or any of the other epithets bandied around by the chattering classes. Where in the pas nobody ever got fired for choosing $brand nowadays it seems to be that nobody ever gets fired for labelling those who do not follow the narrative 'conspiracy theorist' or 'crackpot' or 'racist' or '${identity_group}phobe'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458
Do you want more? Most of hackernews was at worst disagreeing, at best supporting it, and most people were 50/50. I'd love, really love, to see an article were 10% of the comments or more were aggressively dismissive of people believing in the lableak, instead of engaging with them. The only dismissed theory was that the COVID was manmade, like I wrote before. But please find proof if this is a rewrite?
People seem to really love seeing themselves as victims, I hate that.
The conspiracy theory element is a heuristic for evaluating the crackpot theory: setting aside the particulars of the theory, does it also require an utterly enormous, vastly powerful group to keep that secret (but not quite powerful enough to keep you from having discovered the truth)?
That's a heuristic, not a proof. But it does give you a hint about which notions are worth your time to investigate further.