RE: Research published in Nature shows alternate route of SARS-CoV-2 infection NOT present in SARS-CoV-1.
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I was going to cover some of this in my post tomorrow but essentially: In coronaviruses, the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein is the region that contains the most variation between viruses in that family. (That is, when a member of the coronavirus family mutates into a new species, that mutation always involves Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) in the RBD of the spike protein.)
There are a half dozen residues in the RBD that serve as the important "binding agents" to the ACE2 receptor. As one would expect from our experience with the rest of the coronavirus family, five of those six residues in SARS-CoV-2 have mutated from their SARS-CoV progenitors. The important thing to note is that with these five mutations, the binding affinity of the SARS-CoV-2 RBD is lower than for SARS-CoV.
No one setting out to engineer it for devious purposes—such as for a biological weapon—would have created an RBD that was less likely to result in an infection that the original form that the virus had.
It's also noteworthy that outside the RBD, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is very very similar to the spike protein in SARS-CoV.. an indicator that the handful of changes in the RBD are the product of evolution, not an engineered origin.
The HIV aspect you mentioned in your original post means that the virus can be carried and transmitted for an extended range/period, correct? Surely that factor is key in the virus's significant capacity for transmission and it's ability to travel the world (plus be difficult to treat). Wouldn't that in itself make this an idea bioweapon if the aim was specifically to create something deadly that travels far and wide. Are you assuming that a bioweapon would only be designed to attack a local area?
Have you watched the whistleblower video from Project Camelot back in 2010?
I agree with you that it absolutely can be considered a venerable biological weapon. Having such characteristics of a potent biological weapon certainly makes a good argument for it's artificial origins.
However, science and biology aside, we already have the blue prints and general trends which tend to happen during a pre-crisis phase that make the rise and spread of pandemics more likely. We only have to look back to famous previous pandemics such as the plague of Antonine, Black Death, Spanish Flu etc. to see how local highs in human development, societal development, globalization and immiseration are ideal backdrops for widespread crisis and pandemics. Making predictions (though I acknowledge the video was scarily accurate) based on these conditions and drawing on statistical associations in history could yield scarily accurate hypotheses.
That said, I only offer my perspective from a more scientifically rigorous point of view, and there is enough evidence to me that SARS-CoV-2 is the product of evolution and not manufactured.
I'm not married to either idea and I am happy (and open) to be proven wrong.