Slack messages released by Rand Paul appear to show authors of key COVID-19 origin paper held private doubts

Newly released messages among the authors of a widely cited paper regarding the origins of COVID-19 privately raised doubts that the virus originated from bats, as their paper stated.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Tuesday released the internal Slack messages exchanged among the authors of "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" — Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, Eddie Holmes and Andrew Rambaut.

"The idea that it came from a lab is implausible, and, yet, privately they're saying the opposite.