The point is it doesn't really matter because they have used that "18-24 months" timeline for over 10 years. They said 10 years ago that that was how far away from phase 1 clinical trials and 10 years later they are still saying the same thing.
I think they think it sounds good, but it also allows a long enough time period that most longs eventually drop out of this stock and they can find new suckers to buy in without a large portion of people that have heard their BS to warn new investors that it's a scam.
All the longs eventually abandon the stock and a new round of retail investors see a stock with a low entry pps and take a lotto ticket on this and the company can drop the same nonsense PRs to entice new investors to drive the price up enough to r/s, rinse and repeat.