The second Commandment for a Virus.

“Death of the Host is a Dead end for the Virus.”

The first commandment for a virus is seminal,

“Don’t Kill your host.”

A virus must infect a living host. It needs a living host to multiply and then leaves the host to infect one more host. That is the simple life cycle of a virus. No other aim. In the process, the host falls sick. If the virus has inhabited its liver, host will have hepatitis (Jaundice). The virus can go and stay in the host lung and cause pneumonia or encephalitis and so on.

But it may not kill the host. Because that will be the dead end of that virus. No life wants to perish at any cost.

R.K. mahapatra

Therefore, we see that in Covid-19 pandemic, the death rate is very less: hardly 1 in a 100 or less.

Not all virus honour this convention.

Take the example of Rabies virus. Rabies is 100% lethal. All the host that are infected with rabies virus are going to die. That should have made rabies extinct from our world. But No. it still goes strong and does not appear to go away in the near future.

Why ?

Rabies is one of the most intelligent virus.

It gets inside us from the bite of a rabid dog. Once inside, it takes ample time to go and lodge in only two organs,

• 1- Our Brain,
• 2-Our Salivary Gland.

The day the virus enters the brain of the dog, the dog starts seeing hallucinations. It runs here and there with a vacant look with saliva drooling from its protruding tongue. The dog becomes rabid. As if under the spell of a ghost the dog looks at the sky, runs amok and bites whatever thing it can bite.

Meanwhile the virus waits patiently in the saliva of the dog to jump at another host at the first bite.

Ten days after becoming rabid, the dog dies. Exactly 10 days. The virus gives itself a window of 10 days to migrate or perish. But the way the virus sits on the nerves of the host, the host dog or even a cow goes on biting anything living or non living. It is said rabid humans bark like dog and bite at you. I had to take anti rabies injection after getting bitten by a rabid kid in the children ward of Cuttack Medical College. OK, I’m alive and writing.

One of the vicious rabies occurs among the camels. That huge creature runs mock and bites at everything.

The Second Commandment for the virus.

You can kill your host, but you should be quick enough to jump out to one more host before that.

That is what Rabies virus ensures.

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