I'd accept the definition of conspiracy requires co-ordinated intent and deception, and that divergence from dominant narratives does not require a belief in a

I'd accept the definition of conspiracy requires co-ordinated intent and deception, and that divergence from dominant narratives does not require a belief in a conspiracy, but I would reassert that accusations of conspiracy theories are used exclusively to isolate and delegitimize dissent from dominant narratives. Anyone who makes predictions based on percieved incentives and not official narratives is a conspiracy theorist. You can't just use the epithet as a synonym for inferior and outgroup and expect people to treat it as a serious argument. This qualifer that the goal of a conspiracy has to be nefarious is ridiculous, because that just means it's fine when our side does it becuase no-nefariousness means no-conspiracy. People who think that way aren't engaged in discourse, they're at war, which is fine, but pretending you're not at war when you in fact are is called perfidy. Calling something a conspiracy theory isn't discourse. I'm pretty sure we landed on the moon, but I'm also pretty sure that hundreds of thousands of people worked in secrecy over decades and conspired to intercept the private communications of pretty much everyone in the world, while subverting standards bodies, science, academia, and open source projects, as we found out in 2011-2013 thanks to Binney and Snowden. Conspiracies are not exceptional, they're common as muck, ask any regulated professional. We could probably share an Ig Nobel for comparing virus cells to fecal particulates (farticles?), but even charitably, comparing any transmission reduction effect of masks to the cost of enforcement and the effects of cynical policy response still yields a co-ordinated effort to decieve the public with noble lies "for their own good." There has absolutely been a co-ordinated effort to leverage the crisis to institute radical policies, denying that is so unserious as to be gaslighting. What we're likely haggling over is the point where facts dissolve into focus and narrative, and where shared ideology becomes conspiracy. My view is that ideology is inextricable from conspiracy, where a more materialist view would be that a conspiracy is just when you've been caught and convicted of it.