(Who is) a conspiracy theorist?

“That a pandemic caused by a bat coronavirus started in the city with the world’s largest programme of research into bat coronaviruses was always intriguing. That among the first people to get ill with allegedly Covid-like symptoms in the month the pandemic began were three scientists working in that lab was highly suspicious. Now that we know their names, we find one of them was collecting what turned out to be the closest cousins of Sars-CoV-2 at the time, and another was doing the very experiments that could have created the virus. These revelations make it almost a slam dunk for the coronavirus lab-leak hypothesis.”, Matt Ridley

We might remind ourselves that a number of experts, among them Peter Daszak and Christian Drosten  published a Lancet article (The Lancet is one of the leading medical journals) in February 2020:

“We have watched as the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China, in particular, have worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak, […] 

We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

Quite stunning. Especially considering that this statement was done in February of 2020, when clearly there was not enough evidence and a lot of dispute among scientists (as is documented in many credible reports) to draw that conclusion. 

The former CDC director Dr. Robert R. Redfield states in a US House Select Subcommittee:

“From the earliest days of the pandemic, my view was that both theories about the origin of COVID-19 needed to be aggressively and thoroughly examined. Based on my initial analysis of the data, I came to believe—and still believe today—that it indicates COVID-19 infections more likely were the result of an accidental lab leak than the result of a natural spillover event.”

And the BBC quotes him (albeit in a vitriolic tone that did not age well):

“He claimed he was "sidelined" at the beginning of the pandemic and excluded from meetings as his views were not in line with other major scientists like Dr Fauci, the de-facto face of the US pandemic response.

"It was told to me that they wanted a single narrative, and that I obviously had a different point of view," he said. "Science has debate and they squashed any debate."”

(Highlights in the quotation by me)