One of the most persuasive parts of this for me was that Yuri Degan set out to debunk the lab leak hypothesis and in his research came to agree with it. He also chased after Bret Weinstein on the Ivermectin thing later (co-authored a critical article of Ivermectin as an alternative to the MRNA vaccine in Quillette). He openly displayed zero allegiance to conspiracy theory, knee-jerk heterodoxy, or anything of the like. It's always helpful to have relatively neutral actors or even status-quo-leaning actors give confirmation.
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The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.