> I feel a lot of mental gymnastics here. "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" does exactly this - declares that non-natural-origin theories are conspiracy theories. And it has been widely seen and used as such.

I can see how you'd read it that way, but remember that at that time, there were several conspiracy theories going around. Some were saying it came from the lab, some said it was designed in America, or that it was a bio-weapon and and released intentionally etc. "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" is not the same as "strongly condemn every theory suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin" - and again, the same authors did clarify that in the follow up.

It might help if you build a time line of events.

conspiracy theories were going around pretty much immediately, but I mostly saw them spreading in January and and February of 2020. At the time, there wasn't any evidence for it besides "A lab exists" and "We don't like China", while evidence that it jumped to humans from animals was growing.

By March 2020 however it was discovered that China had hidden the first cases of the virus, meaning the outbreak had started ~20 days before they reported it to the WHO and they'd been pressuring doctors to stay quiet. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu...) Still, this was not evidence of a lab leak, but it sure caused people to lose trust in China and fueled the theory.

A year later, the lab leak theory was starting to be taken much more seriously because there had been new evidence (although mainly circumstantial). March was when a lot of it happened:

- A new report that some scientists at the Wuhan lab had gotten sick, but China said they tested negative for the virus. (https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/who-team-scientis...).

- The WHO released their report (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-...) but people were already skeptical (https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-who-convened-co...) and the world was yelling at china for being secretive (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-wuhan-tedros-lab/20...)

Then in May 2021 it was discovered that three researchers from the lab had been sick and sent to hospital before the virus was reported to the WHO (https://nypost.com/2021/05/23/three-wuhan-lab-workers-were-h...). It looked pretty suspicious, but we still couldn't say that they had covid and naturally China said it was all lies (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224284.shtml) but they'd basically lost all credibility by then. There was also this article (https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...) which got walked back a bit later (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-08/nobel-laur...)

The lab leak theory started out as nothing but a wild conspiracy theory without evidence, some of it was very clearly fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment and some of it was straight up crazy talk (like it being a US manufactured bio-weapon) and all of that never really let up. It fueled attacks on innocent Asian Americans and tainted the theory from the start. It made sense for most of the research to follow the evidence that we had, and for people to be wary about the wild and harmful claims people had been making.

I wasn't the idea of a lab leak that bothered people (outside of china anyway), it was how aggressively the theory was pushed without evidence, and all while ignoring what our best evidence suggested that concerned people. We can see that's true because once evidence (even weak evidence) started to emerge suggesting a lab leak more and more people started to ask for further investigation and this time with good cause!

Gradually over the years, the official story (stories really) coming out of china fell apart and new evidence (although not hard evidence) started to come forward. Again, nothing solid, but China wasn't exactly being helpful.

Research continued as best as it could though with reporters and scientists looking wherever the evidence took them and both the trump and biden administrations investigating to the best of their ability.

Natural-origin theories came and went, with varying degrees of confidence, but we never got a conclusive answer on the natural-origin side of things either. It did not appear to be engineered or lab-grown as some people had claimed, that was investigated, but there was never really a smoking gun.

Now, the government says we have new intelligence that is still not conclusive but makes the possibility of a lab leak the more likely scenario. I haven't seen that evidence, but I'm inclined to believe it until I see otherwise. I hope whatever new data we have gets out so that it can be researched. In any case, people who was spouting off lab leak theories, even the more sensible theories, in the early months of the pandemic shouldn't feel vindicated. Their suspicions were not based on evidence or reached through investigation of the facts. I don't think it hurt the investigation too much though, since the information we need is in China's hands, but it did hurt a lot of people.