Eli5-If a virus isn’t technically alive, I would assume it doesn’t have instinct. Where does it get its instructions/drive to know to infect host cells and multiply?
In: 7067
Picture a computer in a small room. You throw a million USB sticks at it and one will land in the reader.
Over millions of instances and millions of years, some code might get swapped. Eventually, the code contained within the USB will start instructing the computer to make more USBs with the same code.
There is no instinct, but survival traits are bred into the code, as the ones that don’t have such traits go extinct.
The scale at which viruses have operated on are unfathomable. Remember, viruses have been around for far longer than humans.
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