A virus, at heart, is information, a packet of data that benefits from being shared.
The information at stake is genetic: instructions to make more virus. Unlike a truly living organism, a virus cannot replicate on its own; it cannot move, grow, persist or perpetuate. It needs a host. The viral code breaks into a living cell, hijacks the genetic machinery and instructs it to produce new code — new virus.
President Trump has characterized the response to the pandemic as a “medical war,” and described the virus behind it as, by turns, “genius,” a “hidden enemy” and “a monster.” It would be more accurate to say that we find ourselves at odds with a microscopic photocopy machine. Not even that: an assembly manual for a photocopier, model SARS-CoV-2.
For at least six months now, the virus has replicated among us. The toll has been devastating. Officially, more than six million people worldwide have been infected so far, and 370,000 have died. (The actual numbers are certainly higher.) The United States, which has seen the largest share of cases and casualties, recently surpassed 100,000 deaths, one-fourth the number of all Americans who died in World War II.
Businesses are shuttered — in 10 weeks, some 40 million Americans have lost their jobs — and food banks are overrun. The virus has fueled widespread frustration and exposed our deepest faults: of color, class and privilege, between the deliverers and the delivered to.