the.com/virus
not quite alive, just spectacularly good at being your problem
means A tiny infectious agent that hijacks living cells to copy itself, or by extension a malicious self-replicating program that does the same to your computer.
from Straight from Latin virus, meaning 'poison,' 'slimy liquid,' or 'venom' — the stuff that oozes and harms. For centuries in English it just meant a poisonous substance; only in the late 19th century, as scientists hunted infectious agents too small to see or filter, did it narrow to the microscopic culprit we now dread. The computer sense is a 20th-century borrowing, naming code that spreads like an infection.
- undead status
- can't reproduce without hijacking a living cell
- size
- hundreds fit inside a single bacterium
- in your genome
- about 8% of human DNA is viral leftovers
- ocean census
- more viruses in the sea than stars in known universe
- oldest enemy
- infected life for billions of years
sars-cov-2 — caused global pandemic starting 2019, infects respiratory system
hiv — human immunodeficiency virus, affects ~40 million people worldwide
influenza a — seasonal flu virus, killed ~50 million in 1918 pandemic
ebola virus — causes hemorrhagic fever, deadliest outbreak in west africa 2014-2016