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

A virus is a simple biological *machine*. It doesn’t “want” anything and doesn’t “do” anything per se, it just happens to be a booby trap that fools actual working cells in your body into creating more copies by switching out the blueprints your cells should create.