As the pandemic of COVID-19 continues, I hear politicians of both parties saying things about viruses that are not true. The Britannica definition of viruses “Virus, an infectious agent of small size and simple composition that can multiply only in living cells of animals, plants, or bacteria.” I hear politicians saying that COVID-19 “lies in wait to ambush us.” That implies that a virus can reason. It does not. An analogy might be useful here. You can think of a virus, something like a seed. In the spring, when you want to have tomatoes later in the summer, you get a packet of tomato seeds and put them in soil and water them. The seed out of this packet cannot do anything unless it is placed in an environment where it can grow. A virus is much like that in that it must find an environment where it can grow. The COVID-19 virus must find an environment where it can grow. It is the reason that for best protection against it is both a mask and a face shield.
The face shield is there because it appears that COVID-19 is like many viruses and can enter the body using the eyes as a pathway. Once inside our bodies, it merely hijacks the cells it infects to make any copies of itself. It’s our body’s reaction to all those copies that make us sick. Viruses have no intelligence! They make millions of copies of themselves, and now and then, some copies get lucky and find a place where they can grow. I wonder if we couldn’t say that politicians are sort of like that? It’s probably a good thing they can’t make millions of copies of themselves.
