Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for June 06, 2020

Viruses are the spawn of Satan; zap him with the Lysol again & finish him off!

Interesting thought: Are viruses alive? Define “living”!

Creatures of God – along with mosquitoes, West Nile, and other potential pestilences…

There are several characteristics that define Life. Viruses don’t qualify as alive for most of them.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-wmopen-biology1/chapter/the-characteristics-of-life/

Best description I’ve seen for what a virus is: “parasitic zombie bio-robot”.

Vern (Lewis & Fry), I salute you.

No Twinkies for RJ ! Verne you did Good !

Save the world Vern!

Assuming you are a creationist.

“All things scabbed and ulcerous

All pox both great and small

Putrid, foul and gangrenous…"

Listen to Verne.

Some things just need killin’.

At worst, Verne is an executioner.

I’ve come to realize that I respect bacteria more than viruses. Bacteria just do what they must to survive, like all sorts of living things. Viruses have no such excuse. They’re organism wannabes.

Just as long as all of his relatives don’t show up for the funeral.

It is just another perspective, making a point that with a little bit of thought reaches much farther up the evolutionary scale than viruses.

Vyrus! Vyrus! Burning bright

On the countertop at night,

What immortal hand or eye

Framed thy fearful communicability?

…

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Actually, the Chinese created this virus in a lab. God had nothing to do with it.

Not even robots, they’re more like flash drives with buggy software that makes you make more flash drives.

Go down the rabbit hole of virus replication, find so much hand waving over the details, and you begin to question whether the general theories are correct.

Viruses are mother natures way of population control. For wild animals, it is easier. The amount of food dictates the population. For people however, it is more difficult as we are smarter and more clever. The diseases have to be more lethal, or more subtle as We are now more difficult to kill with all of our fancy vaccines and technology. For example, look in an 18th century cemetery, short of war, the people either died in their childhood, or were tough enough to survive till they were old.

Consider all the animals and plants that are killed so humans may eat and have shelter; makes it hard to be concerned over the end of the life of a life form which kills us.

So, viruses are teenagers and retired folks?

raccoon: chicky are you okay? chicken: no.turtle:he’s alive