The article has far more severe accuracy problems than that. The author appears is a typical journalist with a left wing axe to grind, so nothing in the article

The article has far more severe accuracy problems than that. The author appears is a typical journalist with a left wing axe to grind, so nothing in the article should be taken at face value. Look at this sentence: "Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas entertained a particularly fringe version of this last variation, speculating that China might even have attacked Wuhan with a biological weapon" She actually provides a link here, which goes to a Twitter thread [1] where Cotton starts out by saying the exact opposite: "@paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: 1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market). 2. Good science, bad safety (eg, they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred). 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach). 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in). Again, none of these are “theories” and certainly not “conspiracy theories.” They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence, if the Chinese Communist Party would provide it." In other words, merely enumerating every hypothesis that had been proposed by anyone got turned into "Republican thinks China might have attacked its own city". That is a blatant mis-representation of his position and shows the journalist is willing to manipulate her reader. Moreover this was in February 2020, long before the recent evidence of a lab leak became available, and thus Cotton's openness to the lab leak theory looks rather prescient in hindsight. [1] https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202139232292866 https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202139232292866