Coronavirus contains 'HIV insertions'
FULL CLAIM: Coronavirus contains 'HIV insertions', stoking fears over artificially created bioweapon The claim that the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) contains artificially-introduced insertions from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), thereby proving it is man-made, went viral on Facebook and other social media platforms like Twitter in early February 2020. One of the most viral of these articles appeared on websites known to publish misinformation in the past, such as ZeroHedge and Infowars, and was written by an anonymous person under the fictitious name of Tyler Durden. [...] Nevertheless, the paper’s findings have been used by many on social media as evidence to support the baseless assertion that 2019-nCoV is a man-made virus. The authors had reported finding "4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses". The authors further asserted that "all of [these inserts] have identity/similarity to amino acids residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 [which] is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature".