Whether or not NIH funding created SARS-CoV-2 is immaterial to Rand Paul's central point, which was that the NIH illegally funded gain-of-function research.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, what I was getting at was the tone of the article, which seems happy with innuendo and partisan talking points. I have an open mind on whether or not it was a lab leak, but not being an epidemiologist I'm left with trying to gauge the tone as a proxy for whether to trust the author, and this article doesn't pass the smell test for me.