[kthejoker2]

COVID is the perfect example, though, because your post posits the "conspiracy ramblings" are about the origin of the virus or the potentially overly conservative protocols in the face of uncertain risk.

But COVID conspiracies are

* the "jab" sterilizes you, implants chips inside you, turns you gay, gives you cancer, etc.

* the whole disease is a hoax ("plandemic") to instill social control, remove freedoms, eliminate churches and Christianity, manipulate the economy ("LIBERATE MICHIGAN!"), give Joe Biden a way to steal the election, let socialism take over ... (guess who's doing all this, by the way!)

* the disease is real, but deliberately spread by China (at the behest of the reverse vampires and the Rand Corporation) to decimate the West and do the same things above

One set of these "hypotheses" are potentially worth investigating - and the US Senate, House, the CDC, both Presidencies, and world agencies galore did investigate those.

The others are not. Not all "crackpot theories" are equally cracked.

[marginalia_nu]

How can you know if a scientific hypothesis is worth investigating before you've investigated it? It can of course be more or less plausible, but unless you've actually done the work, you don't know.

Jumping to the conclusion that because there is no evidence, that this in itself means something is true or false, that is committing exactly the same category of logical error the flat earthers and ancient aliens people are doing. In the absence of evidence is uncertainty.