Let's strengthen the claim then. The article in question argued clearly and cogently that there is a lot of evidence that COVID was developed in a lab and then

Let's strengthen the claim then. The article in question argued clearly and cogently that there is a lot of evidence that COVID was developed in a lab and then leaked, and specifically, far more evidence for that belief than evidence that the virus arose naturally. The article also provides evidence that virologists drastically over-stated their confidence in leaks being unlikely without having any reason to believe this is so, for career related reasons. Does that help? You're doing the same thing here that a lot of failed debunkers do: 1. Citing establishment authority as if it's the last word. By definition anyone who believes in a "conspiracy theory" has reached that point by concluding the authorities aren't being truthful. That's rather inherent in the nature of what a conspiracy theory is. 2. You aren't taking it seriously. If you were, you would have done a quick bit of Googling and encountered the articles in question that go into a lot of depth on the evidence of the lab leak hypothesis, including a lot of micro-biological evidence. 3. You're making statements that are clearly false. There is evidence, quite a lot of it. Perhaps you won't agree that it's strong enough, but to claim there is no evidence is false. When a debunker makes a statement like this and people know it's false, it degrades the credibility of the whole anti-theory-position, because now people start to suspect that the people denying there's a conspiracy don't really know what they're talking about.