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 infectious packets of genetic information.
>What created them; where did they come from?
The same questions can be posed for living creatures, and presumably the same answers will suffice, once we figure out what thos answers are.
>Why do they infect hosts?
Because infecting a host doesn’t require volition or intention, just chemistry.
>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?
Bacteria are animate matter, living organisms, and viruses are inanimate matter, but made up of the same kinds of organic molecules. Bacteria don’t “need to” do things, though they are autonomous (not self-determining, conscious, but volitional,) they just do them because the molecular chemistry of biology causes them to do those things. All organisms and creatures, with one exception, are the same: biological robots programmed by natural selection, lacking intent or purpose apart from doing whatever it is they do. That one singular and unique exception, of course, is human beings.
>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?
Often it is not the virus itself which makes the difference, but the way our immune systems respond to the presence of the virus replicating.
As for some distinctive difference between infections (or vaccines) that confer lifelong immunity and those that don’t, the particulars are not yet known categorically. But there is reason to believe it is an adaptive trait on the part of our immune system. Being so sensitive to more common virus types that we gain lasting immunity from an infection (or vaccine) might very easily result in an autoimmune disorder, where our immune system is so hyper-vigilant that it ends up getting triggered excessively or even “attacking” our own cells or other molecular components.
>Why do some (HPV, EBV) appear to cause cancers and autoimmune disorders while others don’t?
As with the previous question, it comes down to particulars and details of those specific viruses and the specific immune responses we have to them.
> 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.
No more so than any other aspect of medicine, but of course it can seem that way for less problematic illnesses. When it comes to medicine, once we know how to deal with an issue, it is easy to believe, often incorrectly, that this means we understand it.
Fun fact to haunt your nightmares: nearly half of all the genes in our DNA may have come from viruses that accidentally got incorporated in our germline at some point or other in our biological past. It is even quite possible that one particular such formerly viral gene, called ARC, which is involved in encapsulating proteins that are used for intracellular mechanisms between the neurons in our brains, might be responsible for resulting in the existence of human consciousness, as it is necessary for neurological processes like memory and self-awareness.
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