Relevant excerpts:
> The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
> Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.
I strongly agree. I am not sure why, but there seems to be a terrific bias towards any explanation that requires a conspiracy.
Every pandemic and epidemic since the dawn of history was caused by humans living and working in close proximity to animals. Here is a list of epidemics [1]. None of them were caused by a lab breach. There have been plenty of leaks from biolabs in the last 120 years [2], and some pretty nasty stuff has escaped. Nothing came of those breaches, no epidemics, no global pandemics. One stands out as the worst of the lot [3], a major release of weaponized anthrax, yet it still pales in comparison to the deaths and illnesses caused by SARS-CoV-2. If anything is learned by examining a list of lab breaches, it is that any particular person is far more likely to get struck by lightning a dozen times before they'd be infected or die from a contagion inadvertently released from a biolab.
Are the conspiracy theorists banking on the law of averages? "It's never happened before, so that must be what happened this time."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...