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?

Question

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

Answer 1

Love this question. And I absolutely hate when people allude to, or even specifically indicate that viruses do anything on purpose. It’s math. That’s it. It’s odds. Physics. Chemistry. They do not choose to mutate a certain way or evolve a certain way because they don’t know anything at all.