The Covid conspiracy theory which has been confirmed as true

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, rumours abounded that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory where experiments had been carried out on just such viruses. Articles appeared in academic journals which poured scorn on this idea and denounced it as a conspiracy theory, tinged with anti-Asian racism. A theory then began to circulate that this was a deliberate attempt to divert our attention from the likely source of the original infection.