There was some prior discussion on this submission from yesterday, though it fell just short of the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598222

The source paper (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v1) or Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445604029009923) are probably better sources than the New York Times article based on them.