You can estimate the date of the outbreak's origin with phylodynamics, using the diversity of circulating SARS-CoV-2 and its mutation rate to estimate the time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) as 27.11.2019 [CI 07.11.2019 - 11.12.2019]. "Considerably earlier" doesn't fit the evidence
https://virological.org/t/update-2-evolutionary-epidemiologi...