It is hard to tell from the writing - are the sources claiming that they know the researchers were sick with Covid-19 specifically, or are they saying they know the researchers with sick with something, and that they had symptoms consistent with covid-19?
We go from:
>Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.
To:
>not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019,
I can't make sense of this article. It is a bit rambling and seems to mix quotes from different times.
"Politicians, scientists, journalists, and amateur researchers for years now have zeroed in on the possibility that Covid-19 may have resulted from U.S.-funded gain-of-function research conducted in China."
And the authors leave it at that. Maybe some references to articles would be nice? Or should I just trust their meta-analysis or what.
At that point there were not good diagnostics for covid as it was probably brand new. The supposition that it was covid is based on other evidence like them doing research on coronaviruses.
We go from:
>Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.
To:
>not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019,
Is it Covid, or Covid-like?