There are some who believe the virus was intentionally created as a weapon and being covered up – that is a conspiracy theory.

There are others who believe that there is not yet definitive evidence of a natural or lab-based/accidental origin, and that in the solution space we still have either possibility – that is not a conspiracy theory. It may be wrong or misguided, but it requires no conspiracy beyond the Chinese government suppressing information, which to be fair would not be out of character.

This article opened with an ad hominem attack on the author of an article that mostly spent its time making clear that neither of these options can be definitively ruled out. It went on to say that it was actively promoting an intentional motive at play in releasing the virus, which is not substantiated by a good faith reading of the article IMO. The very first attempt at serious examination of a claim spins it to say that what's being proposed is that those at the lab "knew" what specific mutations would do to humans without testing on them. Roughly 5 paragraphs are devoted to this claim even though it's not the most interesting or plausible avenue for what could have happened for it to leak from a lab.

That said, a compelling part of this read, which was unfortunately relegated to two quick paragraphs, was that a couple of central points of Wade's article may not hold up to scrutiny: that is, the identification of intermediary hosts and the presence of a furin cleavage site.

I want to back up and exam why it's unfortunate that an article like this takes such a dismissive view and makes its focus on refuting a "conspiracy theory". For the average reader, whether or not its normal that we don't identify the intermediary host of a virus is perhaps immaterial to what they're wondering, which might be more about what are the odds that a new virus is first discovered near a virology lab studying those sorts of viruses? Of course, as the article points out, the virus being studied was not a direct ancestor. What does that mean? And what about the rural cases of COVID-19 that occurred earlier, where were those? More explanation there would seem to be the point of publishing this takedown. Instead the writer can't seem to figure out if he'd rather attack the author, dismiss the knowledge and intent of those researching the claim, or actually provide a thoughtful explanation to specific relevant points of why they're wrong.