Not saying that I believe in the conspiracy theory, but can't the disease exist naturally while also being the subject of bioweapon research? The only way to know would be to figure out more precisely what kind of research was being done on the Lyme bacteria... I'm not sure if there are signatures one can look for which indicate that some strain is certainly a wild mutation and not from concerted research (similar to how archeologists distinguish which sharp rocks are ancient human tools and which ones are just coincidentally sharp rocks).
> while also being the subject of bioweapon research?
It can, Anthrax is a classic example, occurring naturally, the bio weapons part of the military will want to know how to make it more potent, in case "the enemy" develops the same or similar potent strain of bio weapon. Thats the justification part for this development which is probably labelled as "proof of concept" in much the same way a variety of drugs will be tested against a variety of bacteria or virus for medical research, in case its found in the wild.
Man has been selectively breeding stuff for hundreds of years, animals like pedigree dogs, cats, livestock, plants, why wouldn't the military of any country despite international agreements find ways to get around those agreements.
Just look at the US nuclear stockpile, the US didn't proliferate new weapons, they merely upgraded the existing nukes and upgrading wasn't in any agreement.
And if we were to have a perfectly encapsulated bubble of safety, how much would the population levels increase by more than we currently see with todays accidents?
Survival of the fittest has evolved to include modern day living.
When thinking about the ever lasting lightbulb, if man stopped developing light bulbs of sorts, would we have got to have created the led light bulb as quickly?
So conspiracy theories do exist, because we hear them, but they serve many purposes in society, they can smooth over events, they can be educational, they can be used to draw certain types of people out into the open who arguably have health complaints or a drug problem of sorts, which could be worded as a chemical imbalance.
Take covid, it funnelled money into drug companies, AI's were developed to speed up the making of vaccines which have now started to apply to other viruses, at the same time, the planet was given a rest from our daily activities, insect numbers started to rise, police were able to catch up with criminals that they have been trying to track down for ages, in fact the excuses for catching a lot of criminals was one of the covid successes that hasnt been discussed much, we all got forced into working remotely to get used to not having to commute, bosses and managers had to deal with that loss of instant dictatorship and fire fighting and start to plan more. There's a whole host of reasons for covid to have been released on this planet which is why I say it was a biological weapon if it wasn't people having panic attacks and a sudden rise of pseudomonas in the lungs like cystic fibrosis sufferers experience due to a sudden influx of iron in their diet, perhaps caused by eating more meat and thus iron during lockdown.
So CT's do exist, but what is its purpose is probably a better question to ask.
