A virus is a perfect example of an app. Yes, just like the ones you download into your smartphones every day. Let's first agree on what an app is before we go on. An app is a computer program designed to tell the phone to do a certain activity. Since it is written in the language that is recognized by the phone, the app is allowed to enter. The app contains instructions for what it wants done. Effectively, it takes over command of the phone.
OK, let's now look at what happens with a virus. In exactly the same way, the Covid virus needs to enter the body, the "phone". The virus's instructions are in the same language that the the body uses, so it is recognized. Just like getting "carded" at the door, the virus is allowed to enter. Uh, excuse me, a question, please. They use the same language to communicate? How can that be? Isn't this the first time they have even met?
Surprisingly, the virus also knows and understands the internal workings of the human body. What? How's that even possible? That's pretty mysterious. Our body is always busy following its own internal instructions. It's breathing air, digesting food, beating a heart, repairing damaged parts and a myriad of other things, all at the same time and constantly. One major system is the body's ability to replace and replicate our living cells. It has been doing this from the moment of our conception. Somehow, the virus knows all about this internal cell-replicating system. It also knows how to read and to modify the DNA code in our cells to have its own instructions carried out. Excuse me, it "knows"?
Even more amazing is that the virus is allowed to interrupt that system and command it to do something different from what it was busy doing naturally. The virus instructions are that the body should stop replicating its own cells and to begin duplicating only the virus! Interrupt? Command?
Let's stop here for a second! All of this can only happen if both the body and the virus know the same language. How is that even possible? Where are these unusual instructions we are talking about? The virus's mysterious instructions are stored as a chemical code within its interior, its DNA. Our body's equally mysterious instructions are also in the DNA code that is in every one of our trillions of cells. They speak each other's language so a lot of "chatting" and "thinking" goes on. In this unseen microscopic environment there is no evidence of any brain or mind being involved. No brain? No mind? Knowledge of the internal systems of the body? A common language?
That's an awful lot for me to accept. Here I am still trying to understand how insects, animals and even plants all operate using the very same kind of internal language. They all have DNA in their cells and the same coded instructions that command and control the entire organism. Those instructions tell them what they are, what to do and how to do it. All living things know how to read these internal instructions. How did they learn the language? How do they know to follow each instruction? How did all of these instructions get written in the first place? Who wrote them? Never mind. I'll probably never know. That's OK.
I remain in awe of the miracle we call, Life.
