[EnigmaFlare]

It's not a strawman, it's your real man. It's the first sentence in the article you cited.

The conspiracy I'm talking about is the one described here: https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656

"For most of 2020, the notion that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was treated as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory."

which identifies the misinformation's origin here:

"Shortly after the pandemic began, Daszak effectively silenced debate over the possibility of a lab leak with a February 2020 statement in the Lancet.2 “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” "