[_djo_]

In our experience the weird lab origin controversy was broadly limited to the US and to a lesser extent the UK, and probably caused by your rather idiosyncratic politics at the moment. For most of the rest of the world it was never that big an issue, with expert opinion broadly saying that it was plausible but on balance of probabilities the virus's origin was probably zoonotic as with SARS-1.

It really didn't matter that much, beyond the discussion that if proven we should be improving lab security, but that sort of improvement should be happening anyway.

I suspect in the US & UK it was inflamed by two things: 1. A political desire from certain groups to blame China for the pandemic. 2. Some confusion and conflation early on between the lab leak hypothesis and the fringe conspiracy theory of COVID-19 as being a Chinese 'bioweapon'.

Whatever the cause, it wasn't a universal controversy.