Look at the Andersen letter on Nature - it’s technically classified as “correspondence”, not a “letter”. So the relevant quote from your source is:

> The Correspondence section provides a forum for comment on issues relevant to the journal’s community. This format may not be used for presentation of research data or analysis. A Correspondence should not exceed more than two printed pages and can range from 300-800 words; it is limited to one display item and up to 10 references. Article titles are omitted from the reference list. Correspondence may be peer-reviewed at the editors’ discretion.

Given that, I don’t think Wade’s characterization is dishonest.

It’s funny that you’re accusing Wade of not reading Andersen et al’s work, because it reads like you didn’t read his work - or even the excerpt that I posted!

For instance, take this notion that SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein doesn’t “make sense” or that “the theory is wrong” and can’t explain it. First of all, that’s not what Andersen et al actually says at any point. It really does just say:

> [while] SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise

That is to say, accusing Wade of not reading the work he’s criticizing because he doesn’t address an argument made elsewhere (where?) is unfair at best.

That said, even if Andersen et al were saying what you’re saying they did, Wade clearly accounts for this in the very excerpt I posted: he claims that GoF researchers simply don’t design proteins like this. Serial passage as a mechanism in particular doesn’t seem to require some fantasy of Chinese scientists expertly constructing some bizarro inexplicably dangerous spike protein by hand.

I can’t defend Wade’s failure to connect these dots himself, but all of the other claims in the letter are similarly addressed explicitly or implicitly. Humanized mice, discussed in the article, have immune systems; if serial passage were conducted in them it wouldn’t be surprising if it looks like an immune system were indeed involved. And on the flip side, the polybasic furin cleavage site, which Andersen et al claim as evidence that the virus must be natural is actually one of the most damning pieces of evidence for manual manipulation: it’s well understood that this could make a virus more easily infect humans, that scientists know how to artificially add them, and its particular construction in SARS-CoV-2 (as discussed by Wade in great detail) looks very artificial.

Putting that together: WIV scientists deliberately adding the furin cleavage site to some bat coronavirus, possibly (though not necessarily!) RaTG13, to help it jump species and then conducting serial passage in humanized mice is a straightforward and plausible origin story for SARS-CoV-2, in line with the sort of work we know WIV was doing, that accounts for Andersen et al’s concerns completely.