On: Why is Delta so infectious? New tool spotlights li...

[shadowgovt]

The Chrichton story about a virus escaping a laboratory is the Andromeda Strain.

Sometimes, fiction is just fiction.

[mandmandam → shadowgovt]

Are you trying to say viruses escaping labs is "just fiction"? ... It's not.

[Dylan16807 → mandmandam]

"just fiction" is talking about the earlier reference to jurassic park, in contrast to viruses escaping.

A virus without any genetic code contents isn't going to "find a way" to reproduce.

[kbelder → Dylan16807]

It happened at least once.

[Dylan16807 → kbelder]

What did? Viruses escaping a lab, or a gene-free virus infecting a cell and causing it to make more of that virus?

I don't think the latter has happened. If I really stretch, maybe something could trigger a reactivation of a virus that's burned into your DNA? But that can't give you a new virus, and such a reactivation could happen on its own without help.

Or if you were implying something about the origin of viruses, I disagree and don't think the mechanism we're talking about was part of that story.