@TheSeeker268 Best to read their two preprints together.

23 Dec 21: researchsquare.com/article/rs-133…

7 Feb 22: researchsquare.com/article/rs-117…

@TheSeeker268 This is really about:

1/ the discovery of a putative undisclosed SARS-CoV-2 variant,

2/ in samples that quite likely came from research experiments using simultaneously more cell lines or animal models.

@TheSeeker268 Note that there is no way right now to tell when the wet lab processes and sequencing took place.
Just some time between Jan 19 (sample collection) and Jan 21 (upload dates).

So this is not about 2019 samples.

@TheSeeker268 The piece which is going to be interesting is this:

@TheSeeker268 This would mean that some work was going on in a lab with animal cells and some cousin(s) of the earliest known sequences of SARS-CoV-2.

The question is what would the timing of this be?
In which scenarios would that happen before and after the official start of the outbreak?

@TheSeeker268 @threadreaderapp compile