They’re not living organisms, so what are they? What created them; where did they come from? Why do they infect hosts? Bacterial infections make sense; bacteria use a host’s body to survive and propagate. Viruses aren’t alive, though, so why do they need to infect people at all?
And why do they all affect the body so differently? Why can you only catch some viruses (I.e. chickenpox) once, but you can catch others (Covid, flu) multiple times? Why do some (HPV, EBV) appear to cause cancers and autoimmune disorders while others don’t?
For as far as we’ve come in medicine, it seems like we don’t understand much at all about viruses, or their longterm implications.
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>They’re not living organisms, so what are they?
They’re viruses. That fact that they aren’t alive is why we have an entirely separate category for them that is not connected to living organisms.
>What created them. where did they come from?
We’re not 100% sure but there are a few possibilities. It could be that they emerged from same process that created life (Self-replicating molecules that got more complex), or possibly they emerged from early organisms as bits of DNA or RNA that “escaped” the organisms, or they may have been early cellular organisms themselves that over time lost the ability to reproduce on their own and lost other functions as well.
>Why do they infect hosts? Bacterial infections make sense; bacteria use a host’s body to survive and propagate. Viruses aren’t alive, though, so why do they need to infect people
Because that’s just how their biology works. They bind to specific cells because there are proteins on them that fit into “locks” that our cells use for other things. They don’t have a purpose or a goal. There is no “why.” They don’t “need” to do anything, it just happens because that’s how chemistry works. Just like how if you put a log in a fire, the log will burn. The fire doesn’t set the log on fire because it “wants to,” that’s just the only thing it can do because that’s how chemistry works.
Also, you’ve got bacteria and viruses backwards. Bacteria are living organisms that can reproduce and metabolize energy on their own. With a few exceptions, they don’t need humans or other living organisms at all. Viruses on the other hand cannot reproduce on their own. The only way for a virus to replicate and spread is to infect a living organism
>And why do they all affect the body so differently? Why can you only catch some viruses (I.e. chickenpox) once, but you can catch others (Covid, flu) multiple times? Why do some (HPV, EBV) appear to cause cancers and autoimmune disorders while others don’t?
This is too complex to answer in eli5, but the short of it is that viruses are very different from each other and our immune systems are very complex, so how the two interact can be very in various situations.
>For as far as we’ve come in medicine, it seems like we don’t understand much at all about viruses, or their longterm implications.
Well this is just wrong and I don’t know what basis you have for saying this. Obviously we don’t know everything there is to know about viruses and we’re learning more every day, but that’s true for literally everything. We know just as much about viruses as we do about any other field of medicine, and there are plenty of fields of medicine that we know far *less* about.
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