Paper 1 and engineering the virus

[mmawk]

Hello,

There are significant issues in the synopsis of Paper 1. You write: "We found this SARS-like virus ("S") that couldn’t infect human cells. So, we combined S with parts of HIV, which does infect human cells, to see if this new S could infect human cells. The new S ("chimeric S") can infect human cells"

First, "S" in the context of this paper refers to a particular part of the spike protein, not the virus itself.

Second, there was never any combining of a SARS-like virus with HIV. A psuedovirus based on HIV was used as a carrier to evaluate the efficacy of different spike proteins in interacting with the ACE2 protein. Using an HIV psuedovirus is an entirely routine procedure and does not mean that any part of an actual HIV virus was combined with a coronavirus.

This is incredibly misleading given that the context of section 8.5 appears to be implying that the WIV somehow created SARS-CoV-2. All you are doing is playing into the hands of conspiracy theorists.

[research-project-cov]

https://zenodo.org/record/3724003#.XrZTPGm-gSG

[mmawk]

Yeah, that's what I mean by conspiracy theories. If you have actual evidence that SARS-CoV-2 contains elements of HIV (as far as I know, there isn't any), then put it in the repository. But that won't change the fact that your description of "paper 1" is entirely incorrect.

[research-project-cov]

please read the full paper (in particular p312 & 313), . this is evidence; after, it is scientific expert debate. QUOTE While there is NO TRACE of HIV1 ENV in the region (Lyons-weiler 20020) in all other SARS Coronavirus genomes, Indeed, we find on a mini region (243-86bp = ~ 160bp) 3 partial regions of ENV HIV1 which are all 3 "DIFFERENT" and from 3 different HIV1 strains: COVID-19 (86-113) ==> in ENV HIV1: 1201 <==> 1228. COVID-19 (213-244) ==> in ENV HIV1: 424 <==> 394. COVID-19 (243-281) ==> in ENV HIV1: 1064 <==> 1029. in ENV HIV1 Here, these 3 regions, while hyper compressed in Lyons wuhan (<200bp), they are more widely spaced in hiv1 env (394 <==> 1228), ie> 830bp.??? HOW TO EXPLAIN THIS CONCENTRATION OF 3 SEQUENCES ENV HIV1???? IF NOT BY HUMAN ACTION? UNQUOTE

[mmawk]

Are you kidding? That article was written by a fringe author who believes that fibonacci sequences prove human DNA was designed by god. It has zero scientific merit.

And EVEN IF if was valid, it still has nothing to do with the issue that "Paper 1" is incorrectly summarised.

@Project-Evidence I think what you guys have done is a good thing, even if I may disagree with your conclusions. Presenting evidence is always good. But if you don't want to attract fringe conspiracy theorists (who are spamming this issues page currently) you need to be careful how you present things. I think your write-up of "Paper 1" is something that is a) factually incorrect; and b) easily corrected. Please do so.