I'm sorry, but I'm not following your line of thinking here at all, up to and including whatever leap you're talking about at the end. Perhaps I just need more coffee. I agree that authorities denying early and often that a lab leak was even a possibility fueled the conspiracy crowd. My comment that it's a shame that it was the anti-vax nutjob crowd that largely latched onto the lab leak notion, is not a personal issue in the slightest. It's just what happened. Like with every thing these days, the most radical among us (of whatever persuasion) latch on, make it political, and drive people into camps based on their teams, reality be damned. A lab leak was always the simplest explanation to this, and should have never been dismissed outright until proven not to be the case, but when the wingnuts were the ones screaming about it the loudest, it's going to make non-conspiracy driven people less likely to consider it. That's all I was getting at. If some dumbass who actually believes vaccines cause autism tells you that water is wet or the sky is blue, you might pause for a second and consider whether that's actually true. It doesn't make the dumbass wrong in that instance, it just muddies the water.
No doubt they've always been around and like every other marginal group, the Internet has allowed them to clump up, strengthen their resolve, and multiply like rats.
Yes, they're the same type of people, as it involves the same type of magical thinking. It's not really that different than religiosity. Some folks just can't stand it when there isn't a clear answer to a question, so when none are forthcoming they'll just make some shit up or believe some shit someone else made up to fill in the gaps. It's a comfort seeking activity for the highly sensitive. Even though it's easy to blame it on a lack of education or general dumbassery, I've known some highly intelligent and successful professionals who were also completely lost in conspiracy land. Perhaps higher intelligence just makes for more elaborate conspiracies, but ultimately it comes down to succor for folks who simplly cannot handle chaos, ambiguity, and open ended stories. Working hypothesis: If you're somone who enjoys puzzles but would lose your fucking mind if you work your way through a puzzle only to find you're missing a couple of pieces, to the point you then go grab some cardboard and some markers to make new pieces to fill in the gaps, you might be susceptible to conspiratorial nonsense and other magical thinking.