This is disappointing to see from Tufekci, who is generally more careful.

Sigh. No. They literally show in their messages their progression on this. In between the initial preprint and the final version, Eddie Holmes comes across SARSr-CoV RmYN02 found in Yunnan province in 2019. It at the time was the second closest relative to SARS-COV-2. It contained an insertion at the S1/S2 cleavage site just like SARS-CoV-2. It suggested that such a cleavage site could arise naturally.

I don't know what "big funder" she's talking about. Nature (and a referee) did want more forceful language in the paper to rule out a lab leak (which the authors disagreed with as they couldn't rule it out), but ultimately the editor rejected the paper because they thought it would quickly be outdated by new data on potential animal reservoir hosts. Eventually the authors got a revised paper published in Nature Medicine.