This sounds pretty standard as far as research goes. There’s experiments of a billion things done in animals which only prove or help understand how mechanisms work. From there to saying, “this is the exact same method we’ll use on people, this is practically done” it rarely happens that straight away. You have at least a decade on average of trials and ways to figure out which drugs are appropriate for release.

Unless you quote me a snippet from any of these articles in which the scientists are expressly saying “we are hoping to use a similar virus on people” I’d say you are jumping to conclusions.