[api]

Given gain of function research it's a reasonable hypothesis, but it's only a hypothesis in the absence of significant evidence or a credible whistleblower.

I dislike the use of "conspiracy theory" as a thought stopper to block discussion of anything potentially politically problematic. It doesn't take a conspiracy for a virus to leak from a lab, just an accident. Was Chernobyl a conspiracy where the Soviets somehow wanted to melt down a reactor?

Some people can be asymptomatic carriers, so it could even have leaked without anyone noticing until the pandemic had started.

If there is any conspiracy it would have come later when people tried to cover their asses. That's almost always how real conspiracies unfold. For example, when financial collapses occur usually the most egregious financial fraud is found to have happened as the crash happened and in the aftermath.

BTW given that the research was being done in China but funded by the USA and involved collaboration with US researchers, you can't only blame China. Both the US and China could take the blame if a lab leak turns out to be true. My guess is that both nations would point a finger at the other and say "they did it" while the rest of the world would say "you both did it."

[curation]

Yes! And also, the urge for a rapid answer is ideological. Never has the origin of a virus happened in a year. Or two. The Spanish flu was from Kansas. Ten years after the fact SARS is mostly proven to be from bats. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27551349&goto=threads%.... MERS, similarly the origin is from African Bats but the actual precise location is still being investigated. The impulse to answer now, in 90 days or even to answer in the next decade is cultural and being leveraged and weaponized in every direction. The answer is: We cannot know and do not know and won't know for a long time. Any kind of accusation or speculation, especially against America or China has the chilling effect of destroying any possible evidence. Perhaps that is in effect the point. How can China or America or X prove the negative? This is a weaponized geo-political conversation precisely because the politics is forbidden into the framework of the conversation that is, at its outset, profoundly political and ideological.