Studies generally take time, so if it were months later they likely had it before you. The years later is a maybe, but also possible because it takes time to get grants to do studies as well. Exceptions tend to be more urgent stuff like the pandemic, but even then we had SARS outbreaks decades ago and they’ve been studying it for a while, even if it wasn’t specific SARS-COV-2.
Studies generally take time, so if it were months later they likely had it before you. The years later is a maybe, but also possible because it takes time to get grants to do studies as well. Exceptions tend to be more urgent stuff like the pandemic, but even then we had SARS outbreaks decades ago and they’ve been studying it for a while, even if it wasn’t specific SARS-COV-2.