https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204866
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf
Indian scientists have just found HIV virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov [pdf] (biorxiv.org)
The article claims that the new coronavirus is an "hybrid" of an usual coronavirus with some parts of HIV. If you mix both virus in a bottle of water, you don't get the hybrid. If both virus infect a cell simultaneously, there is a small possibility that something like this happens. I think it's so small that is not possible to do it in a laboratory even on purpose, and definitively not by accident but IANAB.
It is easier with other virus. For example mixing variants of flu, because they have (IIRC) 8 strands of DNA. There are avian, swine, human, others flu, and each of them has many subvariants. If some animal get infected with two variants at the same time, a cell may have a double infection and the viral offspring may have a mix.
But the mix is a mix of the strands of DNA, like 3 swine flu + 5 human flu. This is usual, but you must consider that there are millions and millions of animals in the wild and farms. It's more difficult to do it in a small lab, but IANAB.
The main difference is that the article claim that the usual coronavirus and the HIV parts are in a single strain, not a bunch of strains packed together.
Q: can someone peer-review this and confirm that it is wrong?
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