It's not like it's a verboten hypothesis. The 1977 flu pandemic definitely WAS leaked from a freezer, probably Chinese or less likely Soviet, probably from a study on the effectiveness of H1N1 flu vaccines on young 18 year olds who were just coming through the demographic pipeline who had no immunity to H1N1 because it had been pushed out of the population by the 1957 H2N2 pandemic. It was a reassortment between a known human circulating strain that from 1950 and a second laboratory workhorse strain from the late 40s, paused for 27 years with zero evolution since their isolation, and re-emerged right when you would have human subjects available to test the effects of challenging adults who had no immune memory against H1N1 in an area that was heavily militarized and the earliest publicly known cases among military recruits.

(Amusingly enough this flu pandemic was the one and only reason that the 2009 swine flu pandemic was a nothingburger, the population had immune memory against a strain similar enough to prevent severe disease)

It just seems like calling the covid pandemic artificial became a community shibboleth along with suspicion about EVERY FREAKING DISEASE specifically and only because it gave them something to point to about the Dangers of Research!!!!!!!oneoneone

That's the link I was thinking of , thanks for digging that up.