The five-to-seven-year divergence window would allow ample time for such study to take place in a lab before an accidental release.
The study provides circumstantial evidence against a lab-leak (by highlighting a plausible natural route), but does not provide a direct refutation of lab-related scenarios.
The headline, “Global study debunks ‘lab leak’ theory, finds Covid-19 virus didn’t originate in Wuhan,” is overstated and interpretively biased, for the following reasons:
The term “debunks” implies definitive disproof, which is not supported by the study’s methodological scope.
“Didn’t originate in Wuhan” refers to a genetic origin, not a place of emergence or initial outbreak, which obviously did occur in Wuhan.
gnabgib•8mo ago
Cell paper, shame they didn't link: [The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00353-8)