I have seen this claim made recently, but as I remember the 'disregarded' conspiracy theory was actually that the virus was genetically engineered (ie codon sequence edited) in a lab. The virus' genetic code seems to discount engineering, but not serial passaging/hybridization.
Our "intellectual elites" have a bad problem now with moral/intellectual fashions, which are constantly changing. Social media has considerably exacerbated this problem.
Other approaches involve literally trying to change the codon sequence in a supercomputer to see what happens in the folding and conformation changes, but it is very esoteric since bio is so complicated.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254877
>> [Damore] argued that biological differences and not a lack of opportunity explained the shortage of women in upper-tier positions.
> This is an unfortunate way of characterizing Damore’s argument. It’s technically true in that Damore IIRC was arguing that there was more variation among men than women (more men at the top and at the bottom but fewer in the middle, but Google hires from the top hence more men). So yeah, technically biological differences, but when the average person hears that they’re going to assume he was arguing that women in general are dumber than men in general or some such. That said, this also represents much more earnest coverage of Damore considering the initial coverage overtly lied on many accounts (calling it an anti diversity screed, claiming he sent it as a memo to the company, etc).
The disregarded conspiracy theory, as I understood it, was that Chinese researchers were doing the former, NOT the latter. It is also my understanding that the virus' genetic code does not show any evidence of the former (editing codon sequence).
For the better part of a year now, the lab leak theory and the genetic engineering theory have been lumped in together by those trying to discredit them as conspiracies. The issue is that every time someone would point at circumstantial evidence of a potential lab leak, people would point at the scientists saying there was loads of evidence it wasn't genetically engineered, when those two things aren't remotely the same thing.
In any case, I can tell you that there was a definite narrative in the media that the lab escape scenario was not only very unlikely, but "xenophobic" and "conspiratorial".
Perhaps the most telling example of all my links below is this one, which is very open to the possibility of a lab escape. The latter half of the article is full of example of the efforts of the media and scientific establishment (for whatever reason, mostly political) to quash the lab escape hypothesis. One key quote:
"Antonio Regalado, biomedicine editor of MIT Technology Review, put it more bluntly. If it turned out COVID-19 came from a lab, he tweeted, 'it would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom.'"
Article:
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-br...
And here is a handful of links, of many:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/could-covid-19...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/politics/coronavirus-intellig...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/mike-pompeo-coronavi...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-lik...
"Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...
So doesn't this imply it was Tom Cotton himself who was initially conflating an engineered origin with a lab leak (which could be wild type or engineered virus)?
He suggested that the virus may have come from the Wuhan lab.
NYT slammed him for this "fringe theory" in February 2020:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru...