This misrepresents what happened and what was said. Which is easy to do.
From April 2: "The prime suspect is ‘natural’ transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.”"
Couple that with the admission from Cotton: "Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated [from the lab]"
Numerous experts in the field backed up the idea that the virus was engineered or came from a lab.
Even Cotton followed up with further clarification of his original tweets.
"I am pleased to hear you now distinguish between possibility virus was engineered bioweapon (which can be dismissed) and possibility virus entered human population through lab accident (which cannot--and should not--be dismissed)" - From Feb 16, 2020 (referenced in Feb 17, 2020 in Washington Post.
From April 2: "The prime suspect is ‘natural’ transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.”"
Couple that with the admission from Cotton: "Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated [from the lab]"
Numerous experts in the field backed up the idea that the virus was engineered or came from a lab.
Even Cotton followed up with further clarification of his original tweets.
"I am pleased to hear you now distinguish between possibility virus was engineered bioweapon (which can be dismissed) and possibility virus entered human population through lab accident (which cannot--and should not--be dismissed)" - From Feb 16, 2020 (referenced in Feb 17, 2020 in Washington Post.
This timeline covers it well: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-...
Is it bad that people update their thinking when new evidence presents itself? No.
But that doesn't mean people who pushed an idea without evidence should be lauded. A broken clock is right twice a day, after all.